


Higher Ground

by KathKnight, Seraphprotocol



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Morning Boners, Biting, Blood and Violence, Body Worship, Canon Compliant, Chekhov's Arsenal, Comlink Sex, Dream Sex, Drug Use (Ch10), Drunk Sex, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Experienced!Kylo, F/M, First Kiss, Force Bond (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Knights of Ren - Freeform, Kylo Ren is a Mess, Loss of Virginity, MCD IS NOT OTP, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey needs a teacher, Sexual and emotional abuse, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, The slowest of burns until KK pours gasoline on it, Touch-Starved, Virgin Rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 15:19:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 180,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathKnight/pseuds/KathKnight, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seraphprotocol/pseuds/Seraphprotocol
Summary: Set just under twelve months after Episode VIII, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is mentally unstable and being exploited as a mercenary/assassin for General Hux, while Hux assumes leadership of the First Order - in practice, if not in title. Kylo discovers that the Knights of Ren are plotting to murder and usurp him as Supreme Leader, so makes it his mission to slaughter them all. His one lifeline through his miserable existence is Rey, whom he watches sleeping through their enduring Force bond, unbeknownst to her.When he is forced to betray the First Order to save her life, Kylo finally summons the courage to reconnect with Rey and finds a new purpose; motivation to properly embrace his leadership and set right the wrongs of the past. But as their passion for each other and his power in the dark side grow, Rey must face the ramifications of fraternizing with the enemy and decide - can she truly love a monster?





	1. Opening: Grünfeld Defence

**Author's Note:**

> Seraphprotocol wrote drafts for Rey's chapters and I am writing as Kylo Ren (and a few other POVs later). This first chapter is one of many that I was nervous would scare off my co-author. (Very violent or very sexy - this one is very violent). You have been warned.

 

 

 

“ _Nee choo, sleemo._ ” Koya snarls, reaching up to seize the hilt of his lightwhip with both hands, crushing Kylo Ren’s throat with his full weight.

 

Kylo claws uselessly at Koya’s arms as his vision blurs, laced with pinpoints of crimson light. His pulse hammers against the weapon choking him. Drawing on his anguish and terror, he thrusts against his foe with the Force. It's pointless. His power is waning with his consciousness, and his shorter, stockier opponent anticipates the attack and stands his ground.

 

“ _E chu ta! Coo ya maya stupa_ -” Kylo's gasped expletives are cut off as Koya drives a knee into his solar plexus. His stomach seizes at the blow, and now he can only gag and retch. Small mercy, that his adversary cannot see his face behind the helmet.

 

“You are weak, my _brother_." Koya spits the last word as if it tasted foul on his tongue. Bracing with his rear foot, he forces the hilt harder into the Supreme Leader’s windpipe. “Think you’re worthy of Supreme Leadership?! Fracking _embarrassment_. Weak… pitiful... foolish... madman.” Each word is punctuated with a harder thrust. Sweat prickles across Kylo's cheeks.

 

 _Yes, madman,_ Kylo supposes, his thoughts swimming. It was madness to believe he could ambush this knight, that he would not anticipate him through the Force, that he would be vulnerable to assault. Madness that his inconstant, malfunctioning lightsaber would still suffice as a viable weapon.

 

He had also failed to foresee that, as commander of the First Order’s mining operations on Dinzo, the knight would not already be fully equipped with cortosis mesh-lined armour – rendering a lightsaber attack futile – having predicted the Supreme Leader’s strike for months.

 

It will soon be over. He should give up. Let go, slip away - it would be a welcome relief. But something urges him to keep fighting, even though it's hopeless. As Koya’s taunts muffle into a background hum and his eyesight narrows to a single point, Kylo feels a familiar crackling sensation at his fingertips. It's a recent phenomenon, something over which he has no conscious control.

 

With his last ounce of strength, he presses both palms flat against Koya’s conductive chestplate.

 

The knight suddenly stiffens as currents of electricity surge through his armour. His seizing hands retract, white-knuckled against the lightwhip.

 

With the stranglehold released, Kylo drags in desperate breaths, whooping and coughing like a drowning man as his would-be killer pitches rigidly backwards, gurgling, spine arched and limbs twitching wildly. The lightwhip is flung uselessly across the chamber.

 

Kylo calls his fallen cross-guarded saber to his hand. This time, its flickering, sputtering length thankfully _ignites_. Without hesitation he slices it savagely through Koya's leather boots, severing his legs below the knees. Disjointed, inhuman screams tear from his knight's throat as Kylo collapses heavily against the wall, still gasping for breath.

 

For what seems like an eternity he drinks in delicious lungfuls of air, until the world stops spinning and Koya’s shrieks subside. Kylo can only hear the ragged wheezing of his fallen opponent and smell a sickening mixture of rancid sweat and cauterised flesh.

 

Rising on shaky legs, he plants a boot in the centre of his adversary’s chest, reaches down and - with a faint _hiss_ \- wrenches away the knight’s helmet. Curling two fingers, Koya summons his lightwhip, but Kylo is a split second quicker and the hilt shoots into his own right hand. Trembling uncontrollably, he belts it.

 

Not since the Jedi Temple has he laid eyes on Koya’s unmasked face. Now, it's sallow and sweat-drenched, his ash-grey eyes widening in horror and panic as he reads the insanity and murder in Kylo’s.

 

“M- mercy, my brother,” he pleads, his voice little above a whisper.

 

Kylo fists his left glove in wet blonde hair, yanking his knight's head up from the floor, readying his sparking red blade in the right for a killing blow.

 

 

~

 

 

Mitaka awaits him at the boarding hatch of his command shuttle, fidgeting and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. At the sight of the Supreme Leader Ren’s trophy, he goes pale as the black behemoth staggers toward the craft.

 

“Bring me a cam-droid!” Kylo’s voice bellows, metallic and distorted through the helmet.

 

“My lord...” Mitaka begins to object, but is silenced instantly by an unseen power crushing his larynx. As his feet lift from the deck, he notices how the Supreme Leader’s tunic is slashed and bloodstained, his ink-black cloak sliced to ribbons.

 

“A KARKING CAM-DROID!” Kylo repeats.

 

“Right away, sir,” Mitaka gurgles and his throat is released.

 

 

~

 

 

The Supreme Leader’s speech, broadcast across the HoloNet to every planetary Command Centre and warship of the First Order Navy across the galaxy, is short and perfunctory.

 

He proffers his prize within the camera frame. “Koya Ren, commander of the First Order army throughout the Mid Rim,” he seethes. “This is what will become of _any_ subordinate fool who _DARES CHALLENGE MY SUPREMACY!_ ” His final words are warped, almost indecipherable for the volume of his roaring through the vocoder, but their intent is blatantly clear when he hurls Koya’s severed head at the cam-droid and lumbers away.

 

 

~

 

 

The moment Kylo enters his quarters aboard the command shuttle, his aching legs finally give out and he crumples beside his bunk. He's shaking. Why can't he stop shaking? His heart hammers against his ribs, breath coming in shuddering sobs. Bleeding and bruised, his body protests every small movement; everything is a violent, chaotic jumble and he can feel his already-tenuous grasp on reality slipping away.

 

It was never meant to be like this.

 

Koya was supposed to have been a clean kill, an easy target. General Hux's offhanded reference to the knight’s plot to lay claim to the throne did not pass unnoticed. He’d immobilised Hux instantly, dragged him to an interrogation cell and trussed him up like a Resistance prisoner. Though he was tight-lipped, the general's flailing mind spilled a great deal, split open like over-ripe fruit under Kylo’s merciless probing. He knew Supreme Leader Snoke’s grand plan: groom Ren to find and vanquish Skywalker before disposing of him for a more competent apprentice. He knew all about Koya and the other treacherous Knights of Ren, lying in wait to take Kylo's place. Kylo raked his mind until blood trickled from his nostrils and eyes, leaving the whimpering parasite obtunded in the medcentre for days. Hux despises his new Supreme Leader - but he's mortal, fallible, and vulnerable. Ignorant to the power of the Force - beyond his own dictum to rid the galaxy of those who wield it.

 

Kylo supposes he's going mad.

 

He hates – _loathes_ – the deafening silence in his head since Master Snoke’s demise. Finally free of that constant, omniscient presence and slithering drawl that berated him through his every waking hour, at first Kylo believed that he was the master of his own destiny at long last. It should have been a triumph.

 

Instead, he has become an empty vessel. A relic.

 

As though part of him died with his Master.

 

In Snoke's wake, he's unmoored, stripped of his identity. The violence is all he has now.

 

The First Order army fears Kylo Ren. If he's approached in the throne room, it is with great trepidation. Stormtroopers will about-face and flee whenever they encounter him storming through the hallways of the Finalizer. His sparring partners, never able to withstand his barrage of rage-fuelled blows, quickly relent now - lest they find themselves confined to the medical quarters again. Armitage Hux commands the army. And in time, Kylo anticipates, the general will stage a coup.

 

He can't bring himself to care.

 

His dark eyes stray to his lightsaber. One flick, and this turmoil could end. Now. Permanently.

 

But there's another option; a lifeline tethering him to this miserable existence. He tears away his mask, lets it clatter to the deck.

 

Screwing his eyes shut, he reaches out into the abyss.

 

 

~

 

 

A lifetime ago, in the desecrated, fiery throne room of the Supremacy, he offered her everything: his hand, his heart, the entire galaxy. How fierce and beautiful she was; slaughtering the Praetorian Guards back-to-back with him, that angular scar like two hands reaching etched into her right shoulder, firelight dancing across her tanned skin when she clasped his fingertips on Ahch-To. The only meaningful physical contact he has known in twenty years. He would give anything, _anything_ , to relive that moment.

 

He opens his eyes.

 

She can’t shut him out if she doesn’t know he's there.

 

Many systems away, Rey sleeps soundly aboard a shuttle. He hears the gentle sursurration of ion engines, sees the pillow she's cuddling to her chest, watches the slow, even rise and fall of her breathing and the way the tendrils of chestnut hair across her face gently stir with every exhalation.

 

She's not really here - he _knows_ this - but she's still close enough to touch.

 

Counting her sleeping breaths, he stares unashamedly for what seems like hours. It soothes and steadies him in a way nothing else can any more.

 

After a time, some semblance of sanity returns.

 

Every time, he's meticulous never to taint her with the blood of his slain enemies. Without a sound, Kylo slides his hands out of his bloodied gloves and reaches for her cheek, wanting to smooth away those stray wisps of hair and see more of her beautiful face, relaxed and serene in slumber. Memorise the freckles scattered across her nose. And... _pretend._

 

As his tentative fingers approach, she stirs, groggily opening her eyes.

 

He freezes.

 

Still bleary-eyed, her lips curl into a smile. “Ben,” she whispers, hugging the pillow a little closer.

 

Kylo swallows against the sudden tightness in his throat.

 

Rey's eyes flutter closed again, and he can see them oscillating back and forth beneath her lids. She is dreaming.

 

She _thinks_ she's dreaming.

 

Choking back a sob, he severs the connection.

 

 

~

 

 

Alone in his quarters once more, Kylo wills his screaming muscles to stand, peels away layers of ruined, bloodstained clothing and climbs into the ‘fresher. The searing-hot water makes him wince, smarting inside scores of cauterised wounds that Koya's whip inflicted. He can’t keep doing this. It needs to stop. One day, when he isn't careful, his Rey will awaken properly and see the deranged, savage creature he has become.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Huttese translations:**  
>  _Nee choo, sleemo_ = Die, slime.  
>  _E chu ta! Coo ya maya stupa_ = (Expletive) You weak-minded fool  
>  Karking - expletive


	2. Nf3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Resistance struggles to survive in a dystopian galaxy in the aftermath of Crait, still hunted by the First Order.

 

 

She wakes.

 

It takes her several moments to realise that he’s gone. Ben is always gone when she wakes. _No_ , he was never there. But she's not alone, in spite of the loneliness that stings in her chest as soon as she affirms that it was only another dream.

 

The warm body she cradled in her arms moments ago, in dreamland, is nothing but a fraying pillow. Groggily, she pushes it away. It offers no more comfort. It's time to put aside childish nonsense, she chides herself, carefully sliding her legs over the edge of the bunk. Across the cabin, others of the Resistance are snoring softly, still caught in the gentle grip of slumber. Rey scrubs a hand over her cheeks, wiping away the remnants of tears, glad that they aren't witnessing this. She exhales slowly, pushing herself out of the bunk. Surely it won't be long now until planetfall.

 

They're the spark that'll light the fire that will burn the First Order down, or so Poe keeps reminding everyone, only... it feels more like they're just a candle flame, flickering in the wind. The Resistance army numbers fifty personnel, give or take, and the enemy - maybe ten million strong. By now, maybe even a billion. Since Crait, the Resistance's shining dream has been rapidly eclipsed by a far bleaker future.

 

They've abandoned the Falcon. Hidden it away. It’s too notable. Nearly every city in every planet they've touched on is broadcasting its image in holo-screens, advertising a handsome bounty; one Rey hopes will never be collected. But each passing day, it seems like the ears and eyes of the First Order grow. Sometimes she sees her own face, too, along with many of the others', beamed above holoprojectors. It's as though the Order expects to enlist mercenaries and bounty hunters to fill the gaps where their reach does not extend; offer up a big enough reward, and _someone_ will abandon reason and betray those last few who dare stand against them. If the price is right, anyone will sell their soul. She supposes she can't fault the logic – plenty of people have been left impoverished by the galactic war, desperate for food and water. The reward is more than enough to negate the risk.

 

The first time she saw her own hologram, she’d stopped and gawked behind the anonymity of goggles and desert wrappings. It still amuses her: Little Rey of Jakku, an insignificant nobody from nowhere… archenemy of the First Order. And _he_ sits at its helm. It only confirms what the others told her about the Battle of Crait, before she and Chewbacca mounted their daring rescue. They say the new Supreme Leader is consumed by hatred and insanity. They recount the duel between Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren, and she is hardly surprised. Does anyone else know what truly happened between Ben and his uncle? That their so-called 'legend' created a monster?

 

After all, how could _she_ possibly know? How would she ever explain her otherworldly connection with the enemy, or reveal Luke’s confession? She would never defame the Jedi Master who sacrificed himself for them all. Rey owes him that much, and Leia as well; the woman has endured more than she deserves. And the Force bond doesn't matter any more; Snoke's death extinguished it. Outside of dreams and nightmares, Rey has sensed nothing from Ben since she saw him kneeling inside the abandoned base. Letting herself remember is like ripping open an old wound. There are some hurts that never stop hurting, no matter how faded the scars. He wouldn't turn for her. Because... she wasn't enough.

 

Quietly, so as not to awaken the others, she skulks into the cargo hold. It will be deserted at this hour, and while she once hated being alone – now, she cherishes any brief moment of solitude. She doubts she'll ever acclimate to being surrounded by people, especially in such close quarters.

 

Mentally rehearsing what she'll say to Leia, she wanders between neat, narrow lines of crates from their latest haul. The numbers they drag on board are getting fewer and fewer. Fresh supplies. Rations. Weapons. Fuel and spaceship parts, when they're lucky.

 

It'll have to work... she can't sneak away from the base undetected. Muttering her prepared speech, she sinks to the deck and leans against a box, her fingers tracing the pattern of the metal casing. Hope is in short supply these days. So few people are willing to help. To get what they need, they're having to resort to more... morally dubious methods. One day, stealing from a pirate is acceptable behaviour; the next, it's holding up street vendors with a blaster. Supply missions are becoming increasingly dangerous, less successful, and as their army slowly grows, more frequent. Desperate times, desperate measures. This time, at least, they got away clean.

 

She tests her shoulder. It’s been cleaned and bandaged but still smarts, reminding her of her injury if she moves her arm in a certain way. Most ways, actually. It’s a rare day when Rey wakes up and doesn’t ache somewhere. There will be a scar, not that it matters; she’s been collecting them. Tally marks of her missions, a scorecard blazed into her flesh. Her thumb slides across the scar over her right deltoid – the one she usually hides, from a segmented whip. Like two hands straining to touch. From when Ben saved her life.

 

How different this past solar cycle might have been, if she'd followed her heart.

 

Her stomach growls as if to scold her for such selfish thoughts. It takes all of her self-control not to breach the crates; it wouldn’t be fair to the others. They’re all hungry, and all this waiting feels like delaying the inevitable. The vessel's decelerating – must be approaching base. Bracing for impact between crates, she climbs to her feet. In spite of her doubts and worries, it’s always a relief to have her boots back on solid ground. As soon as the deck jolts, she begins freeing the crates from their strapping, preparing to offload them as the cargo ramp lowers.

 

This time, _this_ mission... she'd had an idea. And Leia will probably hate it.

 

They make quick work of unloading the frigate. There aren’t many crates. Anxious to find the general, Rey slips away, smoothing her palms over fronds of lush greenery as she meanders through the woodlands. The late afternoon sun hangs low on the horizon, lengthening shadows of the old stone ruins strewn about the landscape. Here, lost amongst forgotten relics of the past, it’s almost easy to pretend that the galaxy isn’t under siege.

 

The sudden ring of blasterfire makes her flinch. Instinctively, Rey goes to ground, freeing her pistol from her belt. She's too quick to react. In the distance, she hears Finn’s voice praising their newer recruits; they're not under attack, she’s only strayed a little too close to his makeshift firing range. Pressing her forehead to the butt of her blaster, she lets out a long breath.

 

It’s getting harder and harder to switch off. To remember what it meant to be safe. Jakku had its own perils, but they were consistent - predictable - and there are days when she misses them.

 

Perhaps she’ll talk to Finn later, if he isn’t busy. Much of her life had become a series of steep learning curves. Having a close friend for the first time, then very shortly afterwards – learning to share him. She tells herself she's happy for him as she trudges through dense foliage to where Leia will be awaiting a debriefing. Poe, too, most likely. The two of them spend more and more time together with every passing day.

 

She swallows hard, keeping her gaze trained on the ground, carefully picking her way over rocks and roots.

 

Leia is weakening. Finn told her what happened aboard the Raddus, what she miraculously survived… but it's taken a heavy toll on her.

 

It hadn’t taken the shrewd general long to determine that their Jedi wannabe lacks the aptitude for leadership. Rey is no tactician. Her plans are usually spur-of-the-moment, with no forethought other than survival - a lifetime of scavenging drilled that into her. She lacks the patience for a long game… and this is turning out to be a very long game indeed. Leia has taken Poe Dameron under her wing, ready to replace her when - _No._ No, she mustn’t think like that. 

 

Rounding the corner of a collapsed column, she heads for the sunlit treeline. Sometimes, huddled around a campfire with the others in the evening, her mind wanders off, imagining what this ancient settlement must have looked like in its glory days.

 

As she steps into the small arbour of Leia's headquarters, the general flashes her a tight smile. She looks serene, seated comfortably with a steaming mug of what smells like Tarine tea. Late-afternoon sunlight spears through the sparse canopy overhead, creating a dappled pattern in the dirt beside the fireplace. Luke's Jedi Texts are right where she left them, stacked neatly on an overturned supply crate; Rey's study desk for the past few weeks. At night, they work on deciphering them together - it’s frustrating, slow going… and too often, Rey catches herself questioning why she stole them in the first place. But Leia is endlessly patient, and it always soothes Rey’s temper, helps her refocus.

 

Forcing a smile back, she perches on a large boulder, legs crossed. Poe’s absence is unexpected; he's usually the first to catalogue their haul, inspect any injuries, listen to their tales of heroism and near-misses. His intensity makes her nervous. They're as different as night and day – Leia and Poe. How will the Resistance fare under his command, when- she quashes the thought when Leia perks an eyebrow.

 

“I know that look. What’s on your mind?” Her soft, dark eyes fall to Rey’s bandaged shoulder and she frowns.

 

“Nothing important.” Rey's attempt at dishonesty falls flat, like it always does with Leia. The general needn't know about her latest feat, probably a sacrilege against the Jedi religion: calmly dazzling some weak-willed merchant into handing over their wares, unpaid. No violence, no weapons drawn, and nobody gets hurt. Not wanting to drag the mood down, she remains tight-lipped, and Leia gives a small shrug. Ignorance is bliss.

 

“You’ve been injured again," the general observes quietly. Remorse is a stain on her, an ugly scar; she regrets having to ask any of them to do this. She hates endangering their lives. “Your lightsaber - are you any closer to…”

 

"No." Rey hangs her head in shame. Some paragon of virtue, _she's_ turned out to be for them all. “I don’t know what I’m missing. Everything fits, but it doesn’t ignite.”

 

Anakin’s weapon, for which she had fought so avidly, remains in pieces. She’d stripped it down to its raw components, rearranged them a thousand times; nothing worked. The blue kyber crystal at its heart is smashed, and when she poured its painstakingly-collected fragments back into the mount - not even a flicker. The Sacred Texts offer no guidance. It should be easy, for someone mechanically gifted and purportedly strong in the Force... shouldn't it? She stares down at her hands, feeling like a useless lump of clay, with no sculptor to mould it into what it could have been.

 

There's no other option. The lightsaber must be fixed. So many injuries could have been prevented if she had it working order. Lives. She could have saved a few more lives. More than a weapon, it would be a symbol of hope.

 

“It will become clear, in time,” Leia placates, sipping her tea.

 

Rey’s fingertips drum an uneven rhythm on her knees and she shakes her head. Now, or never.

 

“There really isn’t time, is there?” she begins. Her frustration is growing – at herself. A lifetime piecing apart and reconstructing complex ion engines and hyperdrives, and she can't even restore something as straightforward as this. Leia looks up at her, eyebrows slightly raised, and Rey wonders for the billionth time whether the sagacious general can read her mind.

 

“I’ve… I’ve been giving it some thought.” This isn't going like she'd rehearsed. How can she frame her proposal in a favourable light? Delicacy is hardly her forte. “I want to go to Luke’s temple,” she blurts.

 

Leia blinks in disbelief. “Why? It's in ruins. It was destroyed.”

 

“I know, but… there must be _something_ there that'll help. Luke was training his students to become Jedi – and a lightsaber is a Jedi’s weapon. Surely there would be… some components, maybe? A crystal?" Once she’s started, the words keep tumbling out, and the thrill of potential adventure sends shivers down her back. It isn't shared. Judging by Leia's stony expression, she disapproves.

 

“I’m a scavenger! If there was anything left behind that’s worth anything -” _don't babble, laserbrain_ \- “I will find it. Please… You have to let me go.”

 

 _“Absolutely not!”_ It’s Poe’s barking voice that answers her as he steps out from behind a pile of broken stonework.

 

She huffs out a sigh, shoulders slouching. Old naysayer. He and Leia trade enigmatic looks.

 

“We can’t spare the supplies… the extra fuel… let alone a starship!” Ever the pragmatist, Poe folds his arms across his chest.

 

He's right - but so is Rey. If she hasn’t been able to reassemble the Skywalker saber on her own, then… it needs more than her limited mechanical knowledge. There will be something left over for her at Luke's praxeum; she _knows_ it. Manuals, components, anything. Chewing her lip, she tries to think of some way to be more persuasive. A little mental push would sway Poe... but Leia would know straight away.

 

"Plus, you can't just go gallivanting off into -"

 

Leia raises a hand to cut him off. “What you're proposing is incredibly dangerous, Rey. Great darkness lingers there.”

 

“And these supply runs are incredibly dangerous. Our lives are at stake," Rey argues, hearing the rehearsed quality to her own words. "If I had a working lightsaber, it would decrease the risk significantly. For all of us. And… come the day we have to face -” she hesitates, cringing at the thought - “when _I_ have to face Kylo Ren – I'll need more than a blaster.” It's a task that has been pinned on her shoulders, a responsibility she doesn't want. For the foreseeable future, the Resistance can hide out - rebuild an army and fly under the radar - but when the time comes, it will have to be her.

 

Their leader's frown deepens, her thoughts probably carried to that inevitable battle they will have to face. Although Leia has never confessed as much - not directly - Rey knows there are times when she doubts she will live to see it. It's not what she ever wanted, for it to be this way. Leia's gaze travels toward the main camp as she considers, where campfire smoke is rising into the air and a Bith flute plays an exotic melody, with the background pulses of laserfire as a weird percussive beat. After a lengthy pause, she nods. "Very well," she says softly.

 

Poe clears his throat. "With all due respect, General Organa Solo -"

 

Leia casts him a warning look, quieting his protest. “If the Force calls to her, Rey needs to follow. And as the future leader of the Resistance, you must learn to prioritise what is important.”

 

He grimaces, unconvinced.

 

"In time, Commander, you too will learn that the Force is our most powerful weapon. And Rey -" she quirks another sad smile - "our most powerful ally."

 

Trying to contain her excitement, Rey shimmies down from the rock. It doesn’t feel appropriate, but for the first time in almost a full solar cycle, it feels like she has a genuine purpose. A measure of worth. Across the stars, adventure awaits.

 

“A Jedi doesn't crave adventure," the general calls after her, a grin in her voice. Mind-reading again, or does Leia just know her too well? "Gather whatever you need, and come to me when you're ready. We don't choose our paths, my dear - our paths choose us.”

 

 

 


	3. Nf6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The First Order has discovered the Resistance's base, forcing the Supreme Leader to choose between destroying the last of the enemy, and saving the only thing that gives his life meaning.

 

 

Knotting the bandanna tightly behind his head, Kylo snatches up his lightsaber and thumbs the activator. Its sputtering hum and flickering crimson glow through the blindfold reassure him that the fickle, temperamental weapon has at least ignited, although for how long, he doesn’t know.

 

The fifteen Marksman-H remotes scattered randomly about his sparring gym have all been dialled up to “lethal” - their guard-droid setting, never intended for training – and although Kylo Ren is not a gambling man (that was his father’s forte), as usual, he cannot bring himself to care. If anything, it is a welcome relief from the drudgery of endless meetings, scrutinizing datapad reports on planetary takeovers and construction progress in the Unknown Regions, closely observing potential traitors within the ranks of the First Order. It is this, or BB-9E’s holo-opponent program again, and the projections are tiresomely predictable.

 

He closes his eyes and activates them all with the Force.

 

The first bolt of electricity streaks out of the nearest remote. He deflects it effortlessly with a drop-parry, ducking a second blast from across the gym. Raising his blade horizontally, he blocks a third, and a fourth ricochets from its length, striking and disabling another remote.

 

Adopting the Soresu form would be wise now; it would make short work of the remaining targets and save his already aching muscles, still smarting from Koya's ambush.

 

Not this time. He is quivering with unburnt frenetic energy,

 

Narrowly evading another strike, he cartwheels left-handed with an easy, fluid grace while sweeping his blade across the deck with the right. The familiar metallic _crunch_ and explosion of white light through the blindfold tells him he has just carved through yet another remote. His diagonal slash as he completes the roll blocks the fusillade of electricity now lacing at him from multiple sources, and obliterates a second remote.

 

Instinctively, he begins to weave the saber in a figure-eight about his torso, feeling the sporadic resistance as it deflects bolt after bolt. The technique spared him from electrocution countless times under Snoke’s torturous instruction, although his Master rarely failed to break through his defences.

 

 _No_ , he chides himself, _too easy! Not today._

 

Grinding his molars, he leaps high into the air, forward-somersaulting and slicing the beam vertically as he lands. Another _smash_ ; another brilliant white flame.

 

Four down, eleven to go.

 

Duck. Cross-block, high parry. Aerial to the left, horizontal swipe. Droid after droid explodes in a hail of duralloy parts. He vaults and springs across the gym with practised efficiency, shattering targets and methodically blocking every strike in a dangerous dance. His defence is flawless.

 

At last, shoulders heaving and soaked with perspiration, he pulls the bandanna free, rakes a hand through his sweaty hair and surveys the smoking wreckage piled high across the sparring gym. The recycled air is rotten with the stench of charred circuitry.

 

He'll need to order more remotes. _Again_.

 

He wishes he had a real sparring partner. Someone sentient. Impulsive. Imaginative. With decent stamina.

 

His wrist-mounted comlink crackles to life. “Supreme Leader, you are needed on the primary command bridge,” Hux’s voice blares.

 

 _Kriffing Hux._ “It can wait,” he pants into his wrist.

 

“With all due respect, my lord, you are required immediately. There have been… most _intriguing_ developments.”

 

 

~

 

 

He gives it fifteen minutes out of spite to the General. Hux is blatantly smug and self-satisfied at the news, but does not hide his irritation at having to summon Cad Bane’s lackey over the HoloNet a second time.

 

They've found the Falcon, abandoned on Nal Hutta. The old piece of junk fetches a handsome bounty of fifty thousand credits.

 

It will be stripped of identification transponders and tracking sensors on-world, transported to the Finalizer, where data-retrieval droids will scour its databanks for intel, then junked in a ship graveyard somewhere.

 

 _Fastest ship in the galaxy,_ Kylo muses wistfully. _Made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs_. He firms his lips; let the past die. Now is not the time for sentimentality.

 

“We also located this one on Hissrich,” the duros continues. His image momentarily disappears from the holoprojector and is replaced with one that the Hutts have transmitted to every corner of the galaxy. “How much is _she_ worth?”

 

Kylo’s heart skips a beat.

 

It’s Rey.

 

“Excellent, sir.” General Hux is clearly delighted. “One hundred thousand credits.” This is apparently the monetary value of Snoke’s life to Hux, Kylo notes with disdain.

 

“Dead, or alive?”

 

_She’s still alive._

 

Hux snorts impassively. “Either."

 

“Supreme Leader?” The venal bounty hunter addresses Ren, anticipating a higher bounty for his former Master’s murderer.

 

He could stipulate that she be delivered alive. But Hux is suspicious enough already of the scavenger girl who purportedly killed the unkillable, singlehandedly eliminated the Elite Praetorian Guard and bested Ren.

 

He nods stiffly, thankful again that his face is concealed. “Very good,” he rasps. Spinning on his heel, he storms away.

 

 

~

 

 

Finally reaching the privacy of his quarters, Kylo paces the room, tormented. Restlessness crawls beneath his skin, an unfamiliar itch he's not sure how to quiet. She won’t be alone. There will be others. _Kriff_ , the entire Resistance had escaped Crait on a single light freighter – perhaps Bane’s minions could capture them all? Eliminate the rebel insurgents in one foul swoop?

 

He halts. This is selfishness, nothing more. What he is entertaining would go against everything he stands for, everything he has staunchly sacrificed to rise to the helm of the First Order army.

 

The alternative, however, is unthinkable.

 

Heart pounding, he shuts his eyes and reaches out, tracing the red astral thread to her blazing, powerful presence in the Force.

 

It's becoming easier.

 

He thinks that he could find her anywhere, now.

 

 

~

 

 

The hairs at the back of his neck prickle, and it is as though all of the air is sucked from the room. She glances up distractedly.

 

Rey is not imprisoned, or being interrogated or tortured, as he had feared. Instead, she crouches alongside something, methodically reaching inside, dropping its contents and repeating, as if unloading an invisible crate. Her features are almost exactly as he remembers from the final time they connected on Crait – when she was awake, anyway – the same soft brown waves escaping the single bun she wears, same vibrant hazel eyes, same full, pink lips and angular, hard-set jaw.

 

But she's thinner, and her right arm is bandaged beyond the wrappings she favours, and the tanned skin of her shoulders is criss-crossed with scars.

 

He can’t do this.

 

He _must_ do this.

 

“Rey.” Her name comes out as a deep metallic purr through the vocoder of his helmet.

 

Her beautiful eyes widen in shock and she's on her feet in an instant, pivoting to face him, seizing the NN-14 blaster pistol from her waistband and taking aim directly at his mask.

 

 _You_ are _a monster._

 

_Yes, I am._

 

He wills himself to stop shaking. “You have to leave. Now.”

 

She frowns. The blaster-barrel trembles with her hands.

 

“Take your shuttle and go.”

 

“I… I don’t take orders from you,” she stammers. “I thought… I thought this… this _thing_ was...”

 

“They’ve found you,” he interrupts flatly.

 

She shakes her head and scoffs. “Impossible. What do _you_ care, anyw- ”

 

“Are you on Hissrich?”

 

Her brows knit in confusion.

 

“The Hutts call it… Peveron,” he continues.

 

She recoils. The colour drains from her face and her arms drop limply by her sides.

 

“Rey, _go_. Now.”

 

Hazarding one last glance at the masked brute before her, she turns and flees.

 

 

~

 

 

Four standard days later, the First Order still awaits the arrival of the stripped Falcon and news of the Resistance warrior’s capture. Admiral Tarkin, having assumed command of the Mid Rim Territories, has sent the Supreme Leader a much-needed gift – perhaps hoping to fare better than his predecessor – a kyber rock. Kyber is an extremely rare find nowadays, especially since the Empire strip-mined all of its known points of supply and the First Order commandeered Ilum – its richest source – to develop the ill-fated Starkiller Base.

 

Lothal was well-known for its kyber crystals before it fell into the clutches of the Empire. Miraculously, someone unearthed a single gemstone at Pretor Flats. Probably a slave-child, Kylo considers, maybe even a Force-sensitive, most likely executed for their prize.

 

Slavery was the first thing he would have abolished as sovereign of a New Order. But it was an idealistic pipe-dream. The First Order’s industries are largely slave-driven, and he is increasingly aware that he holds the reins of a beast he cannot control.

 

He banishes the memory as he sits cross-legged in a meditative pose on the polished obsidian throne room floor, his lightsaber and the blue incandescent rock laid out in front of him. He has not undertaken the ritual since pledging allegiance to the darkness, and even then, under Snoke’s guidance.

 

Cracking open the casing that isolates the cycling field energisers from the focusing crystals is straightforward enough. He breathes slowly and deeply, willing the delicate components to hover and gently dismantle before his steady gaze. The crystal energy chamber bisects from the primary crystal mount and slowly descends to rest on the floor. He tilts the hilt downward to free the cracked kyber crystal from its mount.

 

It is easily extracted. Too easily. A tiny crimson fragment dislodges, then another, then a shower of red crystalline powder like sand.

 

He gapes in disbelief that the damned thing worked at all.

 

He can almost feel gnarled, yellowed claws clutching at his shoulders and hear a malevolent husking in his ear as he turns his attention to the new crystal. It is pure, unmarred. He will corrupt it, imbue it with the dark Force – he is the Jedi Killer and it will be red – over many days of meditation, but he mustn’t shatter it, or worse.

 

The kyber rock rises in front of him.

 

Meditation has always been a challenge for Kylo Ren, but is almost unendurable now. The voices of those he has slain, or allowed to be slain, echo through his thoughts. The Hosnian Cataclysm’s billions of victims, screaming, then suddenly silenced. Han Solo’s features, twisted in surprise and reflecting the soft glow of crimson light from the blade impaling his chest, melt into forgiveness as he touches his son’s face and tumbles into the bowels of the oscillator, dead. Koya’s haunting shrieks as he is dismembered.

 

Mid-air, the blue stone oscillates violently.

 

Kylo glares at it, praying for it to stop, as the ambient noise of the Star Destroyer deadens and his skin erupts in gooseflesh. All at once he senses a second figure behind him, materialised from nowhere, and is certain that somehow it is Snoke. He ignores it and fixates determinedly on the crystal. Sweat beads on the hard lines of his brow.

 

 

~

 

 

The figure doesn't touch him or even so much as speak, but after a time, settles on the deck beside him, also cross-legged. It’s _her._ Undoubtedly a hallucination; a product of his madness. He didn’t summon her, and she can’t control their connection.

 

...can she?

 

Is she _learning_?

 

His eyes flicker to Rey’s. She watches him steadily, solemnly, seeming to understand that he is intensely occupied with something.

 

“Thank you, Ben,” she finally whispers.

 

Kylo does not answer and returns his focus to the crystal, but that the unwelcome tic under his left eye has returned. No words could possibly equal the force of what's inside him. His jaw clenches and unclenches.

 

She follows his gaze, seeing nothing, but impossibly, the crystal stills. “What are you doing?”

 

“Nothing,” he mutters. “Nothing of any importance to you.” His trembling hands betray his outwardly calm composure. He wants his mask. _She will see_ , Snoke’s voice rumbles at the edges of his consciousness. _She will look into your ruined face and see the deranged abomination you’ve become._

 

They both stare ahead silently, him at the blue stone and her at empty air.

 

“Are you safe?” he asks tightly, breath barely leaving his lungs.

 

She looks at him again with something close to compassion in her eyes, reaches across and stills his gloved, shaking hand with hers. “Yes,” she replies. “For now.”

 

He turns his much larger hand over in hers, clasping it, softly grazing her knuckles with the pad of his thumb. “I’m tempering a crystal,” he confides.

 

“What happened to yours?”

 

No response.

 

“That takes… days?” she tries again.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I’m… I’m interrupting, sorry. I don’t know when this… connection… _thing_ will break.”

 

He speaks to their joined hands. “I could keep you here,” he murmurs darkly.

 

“No, you can’t. You can’t control this any more than I can.” But her voice quavers, and he can hear the doubt in her tone.

 

Their eyes meet again. An unspoken understanding passes between them.

 

“Stay,” he entreats, even if her agreement is immaterial.

 

A shy nod. “I… I’ll stay for as long as I can,” she assents, gently squeezing his fingers.

 

For a long time, he holds her hand, comforted by the illusion of her closeness and her simple, innocent gesture of support. How long has it been since anyone touched him like this? Their silence is strangely calming while he meditates on the crystal, the warmth and softness of her skin reassuring him she's there, she's all right, and for a little while, he won't be alone. When she vanishes and his fingers close on cold leather, the stone remains steady.

 

 

 


	4. c4 g6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's loyalties are cast into doubt when she inexplicably warns General Organa and Poe that their base has been discovered by the First Order.

 

As soon as she's dismissed, Rey can hear raised voices coming from the arbour. Leia and Poe, arguing over letting her go. It pains her to cause conflict between them, but there's no alternative. Better to be out of earshot.

 

Instead, she volunteers to help distribute their latest haul – Rose Tico's job, but Finn will be finished at the firing range any minute now. She's caught the secret smiles they share when they think no one's watching. Rose had chattered away happily about him almost nonstop during the return journey, and the change in Finn is wonderful – he’s more self-assured when he's with Rose, as if his world is imbued with direction and purpose at long last. Maybe that's what being in love means. If anyone can be content in these desperate times, Rey sees no reason why she shouldn’t lend herself to making it possible. After all, no one's waiting for her.

 

She is unpacking the contents of a crate when something disturbingly familiar prickles at her awareness, and her heart leaps into her throat. The Force is suddenly alive and hungry around her. Living through the past solar cycle as fugitives from the Order has robbed her of any sense of security; shoot first, or die – that’s how she’s survived. Fumbling at her belt, she seizes her blaster and directs it…

 

...at _his_ helmet.

 

Her shoulder twinges painfully and her pulse thumps in her ears. Seeing _him_ after all this time - just as he was on Takodana - feels like falling from a great height. After one solar cycle of nothing, the connection between them still feels so raw and powerful, it reminds her of touching a live wire in a wrecked starship. His face, once again hidden. Remembering the conflicted, vulnerable man behind that mask makes something inside her ache. Ben steps closer and she flinches, but refuses to give ground, willing her hands not to tremble.

 

“ _Rey.”_ His distorted voice is barely above a whisper.

 

He orders her to flee. At first, she assumes it's a cruel trick - Poe promised they'd be safe here - and she argues, anxious energy circuiting her nerves. It isn’t until he names the planet beneath her feet… Peveron… that she understands this is no hoax.

 

Ben has never lied to me, she repeats over and over as she takes off at a run to find Leia.

 

Crashing through low-hanging branches and thorny vines, she skids down the muddy slope to the arbour. It's deserted. With an anxious glance skyward, she grabs the Jedi Texts, pivots on her heel and races back to the main camp, kicking up loose rocks and scattering nesting birds in the brushwood. There are a dozen reasons why she should ignore the terror coiling in the pit of her stomach and reconsider uprooting everyone, and only one reason to panic. But that one reason is powerful enough: he saved her life once before. Shrieking Leia's name louder than a Greel screamer, she stumbles into the clearing. Poe is at her side immediately, resting a comforting hand on her arm as he settles her onto a crate. The general is close on his heels, puffing for breath but otherwise showing no outward signs of concern. Always the stoic senator, adept at concealing a great number of things behind her own featureless mask of flesh and bone.

 

“We have to leave _now!”_ Rey pants, eyes darting frantically between them. She must look a fright, ripped clothes clinging to her skin, gulping in air, her shins bleeding. There's no time.

 

“ _What?_ ” Poe half-chuckles.

 

Leia's brow creases, perhaps sensing something in Rey other than panic.

 

“We've... we’ve been discovered. The First Order is coming for us,” Rey declares baldly. There was a passage in the Sacred Texts about... “I- I foresaw it... in... in the Force!”

 

Her hastily manufactured excuse sounds preposterous, even to her own ears. She’s a horrible liar. Others have crowded in, drawn by the sounds of her crashing through the underbrush and her crazed wailing. This isn't the first time someone has set off alarm bells.

 

A derisive snort from Poe. "Right."

 

"I'm serious! We need to evacuate! _Now!"_

 

He clutches at his chest in mock terror. "Oh! We're jumping at shadows now, are we? Visions?"

 

_"Son of a bantha, Poe!"_

 

"D'you see anything _real?"_ he scoffs, tapping the Glie-44 pistol holstered at his belt. "Something we can blast?"

 

Eyes widening, she shoots a pleading look at Leia. Of course he's spurning her - all Poe has ever witnessed of her Force powers were those floating boulders on Crait, and after a full solar cycle, even he is second-guessing what he saw.

 

The general doesn't move, doesn't speak, just keeps staring uneasily at a fixed point between the two of them. Her knuckles whiten around the handle of her cane; it's as if she's already sensed some impending catastrophe. Watching Poe and Rey argue, her expression darkens, and when she finally raises a hand, the entire camp falls silent.

 

“I felt it, too,” she affirms - but her gaze slides to their Jedi adept, heavy and suspicious.

 

Does she know about Ben's apparition? His warning? Somehow, Leia knows everything. She's no fool. But she _does_ trust Rey implicitly, if not her flimsy explanation; enough to galvanise the others into motion.

 

Within minutes, the general has given clear orders and everyone disperses to pack up, stowing all their worldly possessions, scrambling aboard shuttles. They’re like a nest of juru ants scattering in the rain.

 

Amid the bustle, Leia catches Rey’s arm and draws her in close. At first she looks as if she’s about to say something poignant, but she reconsiders, releasing her instead without a word and ambling away towards the Griffin. Rey watches her leave, bewildered, until Finn yells for her to help lift a weapons crate. Her sides hurt from running and her adrenaline has leaked away, leaving her feeling shaky and faintly sick. She's still staring when the two of them board the bunkerbuster.

 

The entire evacuation takes under twenty minutes. This is their lives now: nomadic, impermanent, ready to be gathered up and stashed away like a well-rehearsed dance.

 

As the vessel rises, Rey watches Peveron's emerald-green orb grow smaller and smaller through the viewport with a sinking sensation in her gut. It was a paradise, rich with dense greenery, meandering rivers and myriad birdlife, all miracles of nature for a someone raised in the arid Jakku desert. If the past solar cycle has taught her anything, it's never to start calling anywhere _home_. Everything is transient except for the unfathomable vastness of space. Those are the cards they've all been dealt. Apart from clothes, Rey no longer owns any personal possessions. She visualises her old AT-AT carcass, filled with treasures of no value to anyone other than her - a potted nightbloomer, a woollen figurine, her collection of ship-parts too worthless to trade but too interesting to throw away. All will be long-buried now. At this time of year the piercing winds of X'us'R'iia sweep inland, blanketing everything three metres deep in yellow sand. It isn’t Niima Outpost that she misses, exactly… just the security of knowing where she'll rest her head at night, not living in constant fear of being hunted.

 

She needs to be alone. Excusing herself, she slips away from the communal space and retreats to the solitude of the cargo hold.

 

 

~

 

 

Three standard days cooped up aboard this suffocating spacecraft, and Rey is certain the others have figured her out. At least, to the point of realising she’s trying to avoid them. It isn’t exactly one-sided, either. Most of the recruits regard her with awe; a _Jedi,_ a mystical warrior of myth and legend. The veteran soldiers, by contrast, view her with something akin to suspicion. Life as a fugitive doesn't call for ostentatious demonstrations of one's Force abilities. She's no hero, like Luke… the legend from folktales, not the fallible recluse she once knew.

 

And had Master Skywalker actually considered her worthy of tuition, she'd have made a poor student. Rey and serenity have never been close bedfellows; she's too… passionate. Impetuous. Traits the Sacred Texts warn against. She yearns for adventure and excitement... another strike against her, according to the Aionomica. It seems unfair that no matter how hard she strives to become the Jedi her conscience wants her to be, it will keep taunting her with her failures. There's far more strength and inspiration in the others, in the way they support each other unconditionally, the way they've bonded together. Strange, how that one edict of the Jedi religion - that she mustn't forge attachments - is the only thing she's proven to be any good at.

 

When they're on-world, she still trains at every opportunity: on the rifle range, with her staff and anyone who'll spar with her, and in rare moments alone, with the Force. These days, her sense of identity is in constant flux. Who is she? A nobody. A Jedi novice with no master. The cosmic Force's idea of a joke.

 

The tinkling melody of a chrono alarm pulls her out of her trance. End of watch. Right on cue, Poe enters to take over, falling back into the copilot's seat with nothing more than a curt nod. He hasn't forgiven her for this little escapade, or for being overruled by Leia in front of the others. She can feel his eyes tracking her as she leaves.

 

A sensible person would turn in, grab his vacated bunk and try to get some sleep, but she isn’t tired... and after six straight hours of determinedly _not thinking about Ben,_ the last thing she needs is to dream of him again. Instead, she follows the cockpit access tunnel through to the cargo hold, halting abruptly at the sound of... giggling, hushed whispers, coming from its depths. Lovers. Recognising Finn's voice - and Rose's - she quickly retreats, embarrassment heating her cheeks.

 

Plan B, then. The maintenance access hatch is right overhead, and no one will guess she's in there. Yanking it open, she climbs inside the narrow confines of the ducting. It’s filthy, but blessedly quiet. Thick grime smudges her tunic and eddies of dust tickle the back of her throat, making her sneeze. For now, it'll have to do. Sliding her legs into the duct, she lets the grate swing shut behind her and rolls onto her back. The light filtering through is dim, but there’s just enough to see the top panels. She reaches up, idly mapping constellations in the dust with her fingers – the Predator Beast of the Dusk, the Silly Rabbit, the Horns of Waryl. Peveron on the far left, and their destination, Seregar, on the right. Neither Leia nor Poe deemed it necessary for her to know where they're going, but she'd heard it in their thoughts all the same.

 

Trying to meditate is useless. Those forbidden thoughts, the ones she keeps trapped behind the routine of duty and necessity, always gnaw at her in quiet moments like these. They seep into the foreground of her mind, demanding to be reexamined again. No amount of analysis is going to turn back the clock. _Not thinking about Ben_ is getting harder and harder, especially now. Lovers in the cargo hold. Snap and Karé asleep in the crew's cabin, curled up in each other's embrace. Vague, slippery dreams of a broad chest dotted with moles, iron-hard arms cradling her, soft kisses along her hairline. Jealousy is another emotion unbefitting of a Jedi.

 

His helmet comes to mind: chrome gleaming against stark black. As Snoke's successor, he has taken up the mantle of Supreme Leader with such vigour. The First Order has burgeoned into an unstoppable force under his sovereignty, consuming the galaxy sector by sector like an insidious tumour. She'd rejected his entreaty… yet after all this time, he still came to warn her. It doesn't make sense. Envisioning Ben's cloaked figure kneeling alone in the gloom of an abandoned base, Rey presses the heels of her palms into her eye sockets. Months of exhaustion burrow behind her lids, along with a red reticular pattern that coalesces into a single thread. Her eardrums pop, and for a split second, it's like being weightless.

 

When she opens her eyes, Kylo Ren is there before her, shoulders squared, seated stiffly with his back turned. Another dream? A hallucination? No... this is something else.

 

Rey observes silently for a long time before testing her legs. It seems she's capable of taking steps, though she's certain her real body is still confined within the bunkerbuster's ducting. Moving as if hypnotised, she creeps closer. Although he is unhelmeted, Ben's face is still a mask of intense concentration, his cheek bisected by a puckered white line, teeth bared, perspiration sheening his brow. His eyes fixate straight ahead. If this is indeed real, the safest thing would be to leave him alone - but how should she sever the connection? How did she initiate this? Cautiously, she sinks to her knees beside him, wondering if he might sense her nearness.

 

As soon as he's within reach, bright currents of energy begin to jitter and spike between them. There's an over-hot clench of the air, and then he lifts his haunted eyes to hers.

 

"Thank you, Ben," she stammers out, at a loss for anything better.

 

For a heartstopping moment he says nothing, absolutely nothing, already refocused on the invisible object. Perhaps he believes she's an illusion. The Force surrounding him churns with anxiety - desperation - but unlike last time, there's no hostility.

 

“What are you doing?” she whispers when she can't stand the silence any longer.

 

Ben's response is abrasive. As if he were the master and she was his student, to be kept at bay and off-balance. In the uncomfortable quiet that follows, she draws her knees to her chest in a protective ball and glances around the shadowy room, searching for a portal - a way back.

 

Then, “Are you safe?"

 

His gloved hands tremble in his lap. Sealing her lips tight, she reaches for one of them – curious whether he'll pull away this time, if they can still physically touch. The right words won't come, if there are any. _I made the only choice I could. I’m so sorry, Ben. This is what I've let you become._ Relief surges through her the moment they connect. He's warm, even through the leather... even from light years away. Twisting his hand to engulf hers, he slowly grazes a thumb over her knuckles, back and forth.

 

“I’m tempering a crystal.”

 

“What happened to yours?” she murmurs. That crossguarded vermilion flame haunts her nightmares, even now. Since leaving him unconscious aboard the Supremacy, the rumours are circulating that he's gone mad, and despite everything - she fears for him. It might be the way his whole body is shaking, or how he's clutching her hand a little too tightly. He doesn't answer.

 

The archaic Texts described meditating over a kyber crystal; how severely the ritual could sap a Jedi's strength. "That takes... days?" she tries again.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I’m… I’m interrupting, sorry. I don’t know when this… connection… _thing_ will break.” She shifts, anxious to leave, though it's a puzzling thought. Can one walk away from their own mind?

 

“I could keep you here,” he rumbles, and his fingers clench harder around hers.

 

“No, you can’t. You can’t control this any more than I can.”

 

He's staring now, pupils expanding as he studies her, dishevelled locks of raven hair falling in his eyes. _“Stay.”_

 

“I’ll stay for as long as I can,” she concedes, gently squeezing his fingers back.

 

For what might be seconds or solar cycles, Rey sits in silence, tugging his hand into her lap as he meditates grimly on his invisible crystal. They're incredibly rare, which makes her predicament all the more dire. His grandfather's saber will probably never ignite again; whatever mystical power its crystal once encapsulated, their frenzied tug-of-war in the Force extinguished forever. This man might be the only person in existence capable of restoring it. But he'd never help her, and she has no right to ask. She stares down at their clasped hands… and yet. Even _this_ shouldn't be possible.

 

A longing undercurrent radiates through the bond. It starts as a soft glow in her chest and spreads out to her limbs as she shuffles closer, enjoying the comforting weight of his hand. In this blend of dream and reality her concept of time is skewed, but when Ben abruptly disappears, it comes as a shock. Her surroundings are once again closed-in, musty and dank.

 

Smoothing her palms down the panes of her face, she kicks the grate open and shimmies out of the duct.

 

 

~

 

 

The journey to Seregar drags on and on. Their navigational path is haphazard – too many forces, check points and populated hubs that must be avoided. It's amazing, how vast the galaxy truly is. Since joining the Resistance, she's visited six planets; six more than she'd ever dreamt of seeing. She would love nothing more than to explore, but everywhere they go their sole objective is to hide out, lay low, _survive._

 

At their second fuel stop, Leia boards the bunkerbuster and summons her.

 

Seated together in the mess area after takeoff, the general scrutinises her with eyes so much like Ben’s, Rey finds herself staring across the cluttered space into the viewport lest her thoughts betray her. The window is alight with blue radiance; the unmistakable signature of hyperspace.

 

“We’re passing through the core systems," Leia says after a beat. "You’ll need to leave soon, or we’ll pass too far for you to reach Tython.”

 

“Tython?”

 

“A world in the Deep Core.” Leia takes one of Rey's hands in both of hers, and something cold and metallic settles in her palm. “Where Luke trained my son. When you mentioned it... I don't know exactly where their settlement was, and I didn't want you to wander blindly. Then, the night you raised the alarm, I felt...” Her brows draw in concentration. "...something change."

 

Rey blanches. She'd expected an interrogation, but Leia's expression remains one of dignified forbearance. How much does she already know?

 

“I won’t ask,” the general reassures. “But if he thought it worthwhile to warn us…” She withdraws her hands to sip her tea and holds Rey's eyes for a long moment, her gaze heavy with implication. “Well, perhaps he will guide you the rest of the way.”

 

"You know," she whispers. 

 

Leia smiles softly. "Some of it, my dear."

 

Letting the words sink in, Rey examines her open palm, where Han Solo's lucky sabacc dice are resting. They're solid, golden and definitely real. It doesn't feel right, that Leia should give away something of such sentimental value so freely, and she opens her mouth to protest.

 

“For luck,” Leia says quickly.

 

"But -"

 

“I won’t ask you to bring him back.” Her voice catches, and Rey gets a flash of Han's grizzled face, lips upturned in a rakish grin; a memory Leia has locked deep in the vaults of her mind, left to gather cobwebs. She paid in blood for such a request, last time. Twisting her rings between her finger and thumb, she studiously avoids Rey’s gaze and presses her lips into a tight, quivering line. Her eyes are puffy and marred by shadows of sleeplessness. “There's still good in him, Rey. I can feel it. My... my son…”

 

When Leia buries her face in her hands and begins to weep there's a rawness to it, stifled at first as she attempts to hide her grief, then overwhelming. She slumps forward, shoulders quaking as she sobs.

 

It's frightening to see her mentor like this, broken and bleeding from wounds unseen. Never before has Rey seen this woman go so completely and utterly to pieces. She has grown to love her in such a short time, probably still searching for her parents in everyone - just like Ben had mocked - but Leia is the closest thing to a mother she's ever known.

 

No sooner has Rey leapt to her feet and wrapped her arms around Leia than she falls silent. Perhaps it's transgressing some unspoken boundary, trying to comfort her while she mourns her fractured family, but it seems an impossibly short amount of time for the weight of loss she must be carrying. Maybe Rey hasn't earned that level of trust. Leia taps her arm - a signal to disconnect.

 

“I don’t know how to reach him,” Rey murmurs. It's only half a lie.

 

The general wipes her eyes, already feigning a stoic expression. Her war face. Keeping it in place is clearly taking a great deal of effort. “The Force will guide you," she croaks. "But you must gather what you need and depart posthaste. I can only give you Tython's coordinates. The rest…”

 

 _My son,_ she thinks again, and Rey hears it as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud.

 

Straightening, Leia swivels to face the viewport, giving Rey her back. "May the Force be with you," she says under her breath.

 

 

~

 

 

“You can’t go!” Poe grabs her arm, full of righteous fury.

 

Wincing, Rey jerks free and glares up at him. There will be bruises. For a glimmering moment of hope, she thought she'd escape unnoticed.

 

“I have to!” she hurls back.

 

“We need you here!”

 

There’s something inscrutable about his expression. It makes her nervous. They’ve worked side by side for all these months, and there’s still so much to Poe she doesn’t understand. Regardless, he's mistaken. They _don't_ need her here. Compared with the others, a tagalong scavenger is of little value. _Nothing. Nobody._

 

He's drawn uncomfortably close, one hand smacking against the side of the craft. Her back shoves up against the hull to maintain distance. “We need all hands on deck! You take that scout ship, and you leave us partially blind! What if we need another supply run? What if you come across… _any_ other ship? You’ll be outgunned in seconds! It’s too dangerous!”

 

Narrowing her eyes, she clutches her rucksack to her chest like a shield and wills herself not to lash out. It'd be effortless, to fling him away right now. Just a tiny mental push.

 

And he isn't finished.

 

“Do you even know where you’re heading? We’re going to the _Outer Rim!_ How will you find us again? This whole shebang doesn’t make any sense!” He's furious, she reads, that Leia overruled him. As far as the Resistance's ace pilot is concerned, Jedi lore is all mysticism and wizardry. That’s all.

 

A blunt reminder of the chain of command might pull him back into line. “General’s orders!”

 

His gaze doesn't leave her; he’s searching for something. Jostling past, she reaches for the first rung of the ladder to the cockpit hatch.

 

Poe's arms are around her waist before she knows what's happening, tearing her away from the ladder. The bag tumbles to the ground and her legs flail as she seizes his forearms, fingertips digging in, trying to dislodge him.

 

Five nights ago, away from prying eyes, she'd uprooted a gnarltree with willpower alone. _That_ was intentional. The ten other treetrunks that splintered apart behind it - not so much. It's too easy to draw strength from the wellspring of anger. Hazardous. _Don't use the Force. Don't use the Force._

 

“Let go of me,” she articulates through gritted teeth.

 

Poe obeys immediately, but his hands grip her shoulders with gentle insistence as he spins her around to face him. His cheeks are flushed, but his expression isn't one of anger. It's softer. More intimate.

 

“Please don’t go,” he says, his voice cracking a little on the last word. Finally, there's something recognisable in his dark eyes – concern. Still, even Finn had been able to say his farewells without being quite so… impassioned. Either way, there's no turning back.

 

“I have to,” she repeats firmly, squirming free. “You know I do.” Poe scowls back, preparing to argue, but she's ready with a preemptive strike. “The sooner I go, the sooner I return.”

 

Keeping him in the corner of her eye, she stoops to retrieve the satchel and warily backs away. When it becomes clear he isn’t going to follow this time, she turns and scurries up the ladder.

 

“Wait, Rey.”

 

_Kriff, now what?_

 

“Godspeed, rebel.” The gentleness in his tone makes her uneasy. Tossing her bag unceremoniously behind the pilot's seat, she punches the controls to seal the cockpit.

 

It's almost a relief when he disappears from view.

 

Fine. This'll give him plenty of time to cool off. Maybe twenty solar cycles will do it.

 

 

~

 

 

Hours elapse in silence. With Leia’s coordinates programmed into the navicomputer, there's little to stay occupied. Rey digs out Han's dice, looping their chain on a lever overhead and watching them swing. She could use a little luck right now. Perhaps she ought to have brought Luke's texts, used the journey to study… No. They're a thorn in her side. Something so commonplace for the others – reading anything non-technical - is a monstrous task for her. The hell with what a bunch of old books say, anyway. Without Leia, she'll most likely give up.

 

There must be something better to do than staring blankly into hyperspace. Checking the radar scanner for the hundredth time - still nothing within range - she rises to her feet, hunching to avoid smacking her head on the ceiling. Scooping up her rucksack, she squeezes through the narrow passage linking the cockpit to the aft of her shuttle. At least, on the other side, she can stand upright. She'll be sick of these confines by the time she reaches the temple…. _if_ she reaches it.

 

A one-man starhopper is tiny, almost claustrophobic: there's a pilot’s bunk, a ‘fresher and a storage locker for rations. Already this hastily conceived mission seems like a fool's errand; so much left to chance and Ben’s goodwill. She can't imagine him giving his blessing for her to barge into the birthplace of his dark persona, where he slaughtered his fellow students and broke Master Skywalker's spirit. How can she ever justify that? Assuming she can rekindle their connection at all? What if she really _does_ encounter the First Order? She needs a distraction, something to blow away the frustration and worry. Anything.

 

Pushing everything out of the way, she begins to stretch, bending double to touch her toes. It feels good to be moving. Straightening, she lifts her injured arm and crosses it over her chest – it hurts her shoulder, but she's been favouring it for too long.

 

Sparring would be even better, if there was room. Somewhere beautiful to swing her quarterstaff, like a rocky outcrop overlooking an ocean, the water dappled with the white crests of waves and red-gold whorls from the setting suns. And while she's daydreaming... a lightsaber of her very own, and a teacher to guide her movements - or even a sparring partner, someone creative and masterful in combat.

 

There's all the time in the world to indulge such fantasies as she falls mindlessly into the fitness regime Finn taught her, one designed to keep Stormtroopers active and firm during long journeys in confined spaces. Push-ups, sit-ups, breathing exercises. Concentrating on keeping her core tight – she scarcely notices her surroundings changing, morphing into the cavernous interior of a much larger vessel.

 

She's no longer alone.

 

 

 


	5. Nc3 Bg7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Kylo Ren experiment with what is possible through the bond.

 

 

The plasma blade is _purple_.

 

Of _course_ it’s fracking purple.

 

 _She_ poisoned it. Or maybe she poisoned _him_.

 

Mortified and repulsed, he nearly tosses his tainted new weapon into the garbage chute. Even its side vents are redundant; there are no quillions. The crystal held true and faceted flawlessly.

 

A dark Jedi makes their kyber bleed red. That is the way of the dark side of the Force. Any other hue denotes weakness in its creator - an impurity of spirit. The only two Jedi ever to wield amethyst lightsabers were Grand Master Windu and Huulik - both light side practitioners whose souls were corrupted, according to Luke. Every Sith lord in history has fashioned a red-bladed weapon, as did Kylo and all six of his Knights of Ren, under Master Snoke's watchful eye. But then he butchered Snoke, usurped the role of Supreme Leader, and his gross incompetence will be plainly displayed for all to see - every single time he ignites his sword.

 

For now, he clips it to his belt. If Hux’s convictions are true - if the five remaining knights are indeed plotting to assassinate him - he'll need a weapon. It clinks against Koya Ren's hilt. With training – probably over many years – Kylo will hone his skills with a lightwhip, too.

 

He wonders how many more dark Jedi weapons he will acquire in the coming days.

 

Besides, almost none remain who know the significance of a purple blade.

 

 

~

 

 

The ritual lasted five standard days. He'd collapsed, exhausted beyond human endurance, when it was finally over. As he was dragged back to his quarters by the guards who found him delirious, semi-conscious and babbling nonsense on the throne room floor, he could have sworn that he glimpsed Rey in the passageway. A product of days without nourishment, water or sleep, he imagines. But as he tossed and turned in fitful slumber for two days, he was certain he felt the crimson thread tugging, taut – and not from his end. Kylo dreamed of her – he _always_ dreams of her – but this time she was adrift, insisting on his help, demanding coordinates.

 

She hovers at the edge of his perception, haunting him, but doesn't manifest again.

 

 

~

 

 

When the fog doesn't lift entirely, he decides to shadow Hux. The redheaded General flashes him a tight non-smile that tries too hard to hide the fact that he's rattled, and doesn't even try to dissuade him. Kylo has been ignorant to the First Order’s cloak-and-dagger machinations for too long, mired in learning the bureaucracy of his new position while Hux roams unchecked. The first thing he learns is that as proxy Supreme Leader, Hux has forged hundreds of unscrupulous affiliations: with the Nal Raka Empire for weapons, with the Broken Horn Syndicate for warships, and with countless other criminal cartels. The price for their wares: they may operate unchecked wherever they please. Listening in silence, Kylo gathers intelligence on the dealings of nearly every criminal, smuggler, pirate and potential terrorist who has left a mark on the galaxy. Until today, he had believed the Order was self-sufficient; he should've suspected otherwise.

 

He assumed that Hux’s sanctimonious facade would preclude forming alliances with felons. As it turns out, nothing is morally beneath the general when his rise to power is at stake.

 

Black Sun has regrouped on Ord Mantell, notorious for recruiting dark Force-sensitives. Under Hux, the Order hires them as mercenaries for more underhanded tasks – assassinating senators, for instance. Killing younglings. They never fare well after they've served their purpose. The general always wants them dead, and Kylo Ren… seizes the opportunity for a decent battle. He is hardly doing Hux’s bidding, or so he tells himself.

 

Any other Force-sensitives, usually singled out among slave colonies as children, are quietly slaughtered before their abilities present any threat. For a self-proclaimed man of science, the general is certainly apprehensive about any possible resurgence of the Jedi Order.

 

Kylo's forces control all the major trade routes, from the Core to the Outer Rim. Hundreds of worlds that will not surrender to the First Order are deprived of basic supplies, forced to depend on pirates and profiteering smugglers for food and clean water at an unsustainable cost. In time, they will submit - or perish. These planets, General Hux has deemed, aren't worth the expense of military invasion without mineral deposits or any noteworthy resources at all, other than slaves.

 

Slaves need to be fed, and driven, and they can revolt.

 

Kylo remembers General Organa’s desperate call-to-arms from Crait, a broadcast his 'troopers shut down immediately upon storming the abandoned base. Surely no one would dare align themselves now with the dying breed that is the Resistance. His army is omnipotent, all-encompassing, unchallengeable.

 

Hux is oddly disdainful at his Supreme Leader’s renewed enthusiasm. Under Snoke, their rivalry was neverending - but Kylo senses something much worse now. How else has he played the new Supreme Leader's melancholia to his advantage this past solar cycle? The general's mind is an ugly place. There's an undertone of treachery - a vague notion of seizing the throne for himself. He perceives Ren as a feckless fool who's risen to power through dumb luck and Snoke’s favouritism. Armitage Hux is the galaxy’s rightful ruler; a ruthless tactician, the man who will instigate the technological revolution. It's a foregone conclusion. Woe betide anyone who stands in his way.

 

If he's aware of Kylo probing his thoughts, he makes no effort to shield them. What will become of the galaxy, with a rabid cur at its helm?

 

Perhaps Kylo is redundant already; the military answers to General Hux, their Supreme Leader merely a figurehead. One who's rumoured to be going insane, and... probably is. A wiser man would have disposed of the megalomaniac general months ago – and with a flick of his wrist, he could crush his windpipe right now, should he so choose – but for the risk of mutiny.

 

Still, Hux’s disquiet amuses him.

 

With _her_ at his side, his shining light in a darkened universe, Kylo could have done it. Changed everything. _We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy._

 

Is it too late? Could he make her reconsider? In almost a full solar cycle, not once has he allowed himself to entertain the idea… but times have changed. By now, she must know that her little rebellion is obsolete. Besides, she _does_ owe him a life-debt.

 

 _Two_ life-debts.

 

 

~

 

 

It's late. Everyone is asleep.

 

Tonight’s holo-opponent is Darth Maul. The Zabrak Sith has a unique acrobatic fighting style, wielding a dual-bladed lightsaber. Kylo relishes the challenge. He quickly learns that this particular avatar doesn't initiate attacks, but will simply circle until Ren instigates combat. He also learns – after suffering multiple blows to his legs and torso, biting electrocutions through the sensory pads strapped to his body – that close combat must be avoided. Maul is skilled in the `swift flank’ technique, leaping and dashing about him to land one quick, ferocious strike after another.

 

Ataru is the Zabrak's weakness. He vaguely remembers learning of his defeat at the hands of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a masterful Ataru practitioner, in vengeance for his master - Qui-Gon Jinn. The Sith apprentice was cleaved in two at the waist. Kylo launches his large body into an aerial forward-somersault over his virtual foe to land at its back, slicing the purple blade diagonally through its stomach as he pivots. History repeats itself, and the projection fades.

 

The fourth saber form was the most difficult of all to learn. It took a too-tall, awkward, gangly-limbed teenage Ben Solo years at the Jedi Temple to master its acrobatics.

 

Adjusting the Oculus headset, he restarts the program.

 

Experimentally, he toys with the projected figure, taunting it, cycling through the saber forms but avoiding close-range fighting. Force-pushes, of course, are useless. This tiresome incarnation of Maul would circle him forever if he refrained from attacking. Eventually, disenchanted, he executes the same manoeuvre that defeated it the first time, with the same result.

 

And then, a third empty victory. Naturally. A robotic projection doesn't learn.

 

His thoughts wander to Rey again. Maybe her lightsaber combat skills have continued to develop; he remembers the exhilaration of fighting with her synergistically, back-to-back against the Praetorian Guard, as if it were yesterday. Her technique was wild and unpredictable then, but by now, she has surely sharpened her skills. He would enjoy a creative combatant for sparring - someone reckless. Unhinged. Unpredictable. An idea that, once rooted, he cannot shake.

 

She needed a teacher.

 

Maybe... she still does.

 

It's tempting. Too tempting.

 

The crimson thread that binds them is _so_ enticingly easy to grasp, and he can't resist. Her shimmering presence in the Force draws him like a beacon.

 

 

~

 

 

When Rey materialises, the goosebumps prickling down his ribs come with a strange new sensation. Not quite a sound, but a buzzing throb through his sinuses and molar teeth - like the magnetic field of the Praetorian Guards’ armour, but amplified. He _knows_ it... remembers it. The atmosphere surrounding her, perhaps – has her shuttle from before made planetfall?

 

Completely oblivious to Kylo’s presence, Rey is already engaged in a heated duel; crying out and slamming her quarterstaff into an invisible assailant, over and over. She's a sight to behold in combat, locks of chestnut hair falling around her face, shining and haloed by the artificial light.

 

Instinctively, his fingertips brush the lightsaber at his hip - but Rey seems in no need of assistance, savagely pummelling her enemy. Raw anger ripples through the Force in intoxicating waves, her limbs flying and teeth bared in a snarl as he watches her fight with rapt attention. Strange, how her footing barely changes with the barrage of blows she's launching, nor does she appear to be parrying strikes in return.

 

With a smirk, he suddenly realises she's attacking an inanimate object - possibly a tree.

 

Still too preoccupied to notice him, she hurls her staff away with a brutish grunt – it vanishes as she releases it – and retrieves something from the deck that's emitting garbled static, launching a string of profanities at it vulgar enough to make the most worldly Otomok sailor blush. Her fury is such that it warps the air around her. When she wraps her hand over the device, it materialises from thin air: a comlink.

 

“ _Skrog off!_ ” she bellows, then flings it away. It, too, disappears.

 

“...Rey?”

 

At the sound of his voice, she shudders and whirls about to face him, her beautiful eyes ablaze, chest heaving from her _duel_. Her tanned arms are scarred, but dense with wiry muscle.

 

“Are you… busy?” he hazards.

 

“No," she snaps. "I’m _all yours, Supreme Leader._ ”

 

She's so fierce, so far from the light now, that it draws him and unnerves him at the same time; this tiny, captivating woman whose raw power completely overwhelmed his years of training and discipline. Studying his boots, he debates how to proceed.

 

It's Rey who breaks the silence. “Um, I...” A deep flush sweeps across her cheekbones and neck. “I didn’t mean it _that_ way...” Her eyes flicker wildly to anywhere but him, and she rocks on her heels.

 

_Life debt, _he reminds himself.__

 

“Do you want... to spar?” he offers. “...with me? See if we can?”

 

She peers up at him as if he'd grown a second head. “It’s not in my best interests to make you a better fighter,” she retorts.

 

Her expression softens a fraction as her eyes travel the length of his body – as if seeing him for the first time. Glancing down self-consciously, he observes how under-dressed he is compared with most of their previous meetings: unmasked, wearing only a sleeveless belted tunic, fitted pants and boots. Nothing monstrous. Nothing _inhuman._

 

“It’s not in _your_ best interests to make _me_ a better fighter,” she adds contemplatively.

 

He arches a playful eyebrow, suppressing a grin.

 

A sigh. “What do I have to lose?” she mutters, wary disdain melting into something resembling amusement, and she opens her palm. The quarterstaff reappears in it and she pats the blaster stuffed into her belt, striding toward him before she can finish weighing up the morality of his offer.

 

 

~

 

 

Poe Dameron stares into space, feeling like a hot-headed asshole.

 

Shouldn't've grabbed her. That was too harsh.

 

According to the holographic star chart, their fleet is already halfway to the Calaron Sector. Through some miracle of fortune, they've managed to avoid every First Order checkpoint and haven't spotted an enemy craft for the entire journey – even if it made their course rather haphazard. Poe detests these long voyages – always alternating between senseless boredom and mad panic, when someone barks a warning that their ship’s long-range radars have identified a Star Destroyer.

 

In the pilot’s seat of the lead shuttle, he fidgets nervously with a comlink, anxious to make amends with his comrade-in-arms and the Resistance’s only Jedi warrior.

 

She's stubborn, and feisty, and he likes that.

 

He thumbs the transceiver and speaks gently. “HH-87? This is Griffin. It's me, Poe. Over.”

 

There's no answer. She could be out of range, but it seems unlikely; perhaps her power-cell has failed. Or perhaps she's still furious with him. He can’t recall whether her starhopper has either enough fuel or the functioning hyperdrive she'll need to rejoin them on Seregar, and he'd be hard-pressed to spare the necessary resources for a retrieval mission. Why must she be so impulsive?

 

“Rey?” he repeats. “It’s Poe Dameron. Do you copy?”

 

Her heated reply is immediate. “ _Skrog off!_ ” The ensuing _crunch_ and static tells him, much to his dismay, that she's dropped the device.

 

“Rey?”

 

More static. She's probably broken it, too… its PTT button is jammed and still transmitting.

 

Sighing, he places his comlink on the control panel, silently praying the Force is with her.

 

Rey’s voice blares through the speaker once again. “I’m _all yours_ , _Supreme Leader!_ ” she yells.

 

 

~

 

 

She flinches when his fingers encircle her wrapped forearm, but allows him to lead her through the hallways of the Finalizer. At this hour, they're virtually deserted. Much to his amusement, she almost needs to jog to keep pace with his long strides. Almost immediately, she stumbles over the deck grating and nearly topples into him.

 

He frowns over his shoulder; she isn't normally this clumsy.

 

“Watch it,” she mutters under her breath.

 

“Watch what?”

 

She points toward the deck grating. “That log. They’re everywhere… I’ll trip.”

 

Interesting. Doubling back, he releases her. “Where? Where, exactly?”

 

Rey gestures to the empty floor and, impulsively, he swings his boot at it as though kicking a ball. There's no resistance, but she lets out an unintelligible noise and her jaw drops.

 

“What happened?”

 

“You… you passed right through it.” Wide-eyed, she gapes at the deck. “...like a ghost.”

 

Any trace of fear in Rey is gone; her hazel eyes shine with curiosity. An idea comes to him - something they should have explored long ago - and he grins. The expression feels foreign to his face, but she seems to understand anyway - because she gives him that half-smile he loves, and his heart swells in answer.

 

“Come on.” Grasping her wrist again, he guides her further through the passageway.

 

Sparring can wait.

 

 

~

 

 

For a few precious hours, it’s like being children again, and they forget themselves.

 

Rey giggles at their discovery that not only can she pass through walls and closed bulkhead doors, but that if he releases her and charges ahead alone she'll reappear behind him, even if she's stationary. She describes how they're moving in a broad field on her side of the connection, and cannot perceive the obstacles on his side which she traverses like a phantasm. Jokingly, she speculates why she isn't sinking through the floor.

 

On the rare occasion they cross paths with Stormtroopers, Kylo affects a stiff, formal marching gait and nods acknowledgement, breaking into an excited run once again with Rey in tow as they disappear out of sight. If they see her, they don't react… he doubts if _he's_ even recognisable without his usual military regalia. Usually they would about-face and march hurriedly away at the sight of him, frantic to be anywhere else.

 

She can't feel the turbolift rising, nor does she experience the claustrophobia of their last encounter aboard an elevator, but waves her arms exuberantly through its vertical illumination panels while he presses his lips together, trying not to laugh.

 

Of _course_ he drags her through the Finalizer’s largest communal kitchen, unacknowledged by the service-droids systematically cracking and whisking nuna eggs and kneading air-puffed flatbread dough for the morning shift’s breakfast. He is delighted when she suddenly halts, inhaling deeply and swallowing, as if trying to ingest the mouthwatering scents.

 

“Where are we?” she murmurs.

 

“The kitchen.”

 

Eyes shut, she fills her lungs, savouring the sensation. “What… what can I smell?”

 

He sniffs. “Tailring bacon. Baking bread.”

 

She's completely captivated by the delicious aromas. Her enthralled expression makes him wonder how long it has been since she devoured anything other than the dirt-cheap veg-meat and polystarch bread of quarter-portions.

 

“...Can we just stay here?” She grins fiendishly.

 

He _almost_ chuckles again and palms something from the fruit bowl. “Another time.”

 

Reluctantly, she lets him guide her into the mess area.

 

 

~

 

 

Here, at this hour, they're alone.

 

Releasing her forearm, he plants himself before her and dramatically unfurls his fingers around the jogan fruit, holding it at her eye level.

 

“Can you see this?”

 

Rey examines his prize, and he pretends not to notice her slightly-raised eyebrows and barely-hidden smile. “Yes.”

 

“Describe it.”

 

“It’s round and purple… with wavy white stripes across its skin. And burgundy leaves.”

 

“It’s jogan fruit,” he tells her.

 

“Jogan fruit,” she echoes, as if testing the name on her tongue.

 

His eyes don't leave hers as he lifts it to his mouth and bites deeply into its pulp, sucking the remnants of juice from its exposed flesh. He has her undivided attention now, grinning wickedly as he fishes a Kishakk blade from his trouser pocket and slices off a small portion.

 

“Close your eyes.”

 

She obeys, brows drawn in concentration. Rey’s soft lips close ever-so-gently over his fingertips as he carefully places the slice into her waiting mouth, and his mind stutters. Eyes tightly shut, she rolls the pulp around her palate, revelling in its sweetness.

 

“Oh, _stars,_ ” she purrs thickly, licking her lips.

 

His heart beats faster.

 

For a beat, she locks eyes with him. Had he anticipated this response, he would've had the Supremacy’s throne room laden with fruit-platters, he muses. Not for the first time, she notices the cracks in his self-assured facade - but then her hungry gaze returns to the purple fruit, and before he can react, she has greedily plucked it from his grasp.

 

It doesn't vanish. Kylo can only stare, slack-jawed, a flood of heat burning south as she devours her morsel voraciously. The sound escaping her lips as she bites into the juicy flesh is suggestive of something far less innocent than mere jogan fruit. It's _obscene_ , the slick noises of pleasure she's making. Orange juice trickles in rivulets down her chin, dribbling onto her tunic. He could just... lick them up. Lick her clean. Swallowing hard, he wonders when this developed into anything more than a scientific experiment.

 

Then, the moment is over.

 

“Would it work if you threw it at me?” she asks innocently, wiping her chin.

 

“We’ll see,” he replies, too shakily.

 

It doesn’t.

 

The fruit flies straight through her as if she were a hologram, bouncing on the deck at her feet.

 

 

~

 

 

They finally reach the Finalizer’s sparring gym, although perhaps from her perspective, they are also somewhere in a large field on a strange, electromagnetically-charged planet. Coexistence in two realities is mind-bending, and the resonant throb in his teeth is an unwelcome irritation. 

 

She gawks, transfixed by the lightsaber, as he ignites its twin blades and revolves it theatrically so she can hear them sing through the air. Spinning it expertly about one hand in a wheel of red fire, he tosses it high into the air then deftly catches it in the opposite hand, purely grandstanding now for her entertainment.

 

Extinguishing his weapon, he holds it out to her. Rey’s eyes flicker to his, seeking reassurance, and she gingerly lifts the double hilt from his grasp. It remains solid in her hand.

 

“You should fight with a saberstaff,” he advises. “You're so proficient with your quarterstaff, after all...”

 

She blushes again, probably recalling her exploits earlier this evening.

 

“It’s a training weapon,” he continues. “The beams will feel warm – they can burn your skin – but they won’t cut. It's safe for sparring.”

 

Rey methodically inspects the saberstaff. “Does it contain kyber crystals?” she asks, peering into the blade emitter shroud at one end.

 

“No. Synth-crystals.”

 

By the time Kylo retrieves another training saber from the storage cabinet for himself, she has re-ignited both blades and carefully palms one, testing its warmth. He doubts that a lightsaber - or any other weapon - could physically injure her through their connection, but resolves she'll never lay eyes on his corrupted amethyst blade. Instead, he activates his own single red beam. 

 

“Do you want to spar?” 

 

“Can we?” she counters, her dilated pupils reflecting twin red pinpoints of light.

 

“Let’s find out.” He brandishes his blade vertically, a textbook Shii-Cho opening stance. “Attack me.” 

 

Her first strike is hesitant, experimental, with little power behind it. Their blades miraculously connect in a crackling white spark – and her resplendent face lights up in amazement. With a delighted cry, she launches another, more forceful slash at his legs with the opposite beam; easily blocked with a drop-parry.

 

"Ben... Mother of moons, _Ben... _... it works!" She's beaming, as if she'd just unearthed a treasure trove worth a quadrillion portions.__

 

Kylo grins back triumphantly, forgetting she's the enemy, forgetting everything.

 

Their sparring continues, but he is deliberately slow, methodical, determined to put her at ease and test the permutations of their strange bond. There's an ungainly elegance in the fluid way she moves, pivoting and lunging with her virtual weapon. Later, there will be ample opportunity for more vigorous combat – many opportunities, he hopes, tingling with anticipation. Rey’s joy is infectious.

 

 

~

 

 

After an exhilarating few hours, Kylo notices that she's shivering, despite the exertion he's putting her through. It's impossible, anyway - environmental sensors keep the warship's temperature constant.

 

“Are you cold?” he asks doubtfully.

 

Deactivating her saberstaff, Rey crosses her arms over her chest. “Yes, it's freezing here… Aren’t you?” The words puff from her lips in clouds of condensation.

 

Another blunt reminder that she's not really here with him. He extinguishes his own blade, belts it and gathers up his cloak. Facing her, he flares his arms over her head, fanning out the thick gaberwool fabric over her back, allowing it to settle on her shoulders. It puddles on the deck at her feet, dwarfing her petite frame.

 

This close, he can feel fine strands of her silken chestnut hair brushing his bare arm. Carefully, as though she were made of glass, he wraps his hands around her cloaked shoulders and pulls her against his body, wondering if she can sense the heat radiating from his skin.

 

“Are you warmer?” he murmurs softly.

 

Rey’s shivering has abated, but when her glassy eyes rise to meet his, he suddenly realises she's close to tears.

 

“You’re not really here,” she whispers, echoing his thoughts.

 

“Can you read my mind?”

 

No answer.

 

“...Can I read yours?”

 

Without waiting for permission, he seizes her shoulder firmly and raises his splayed right hand to her temple. Rey immediately winces and wriggles to wrench herself free, but he _must_ test this too, he _must_ know, and he clutches at her cloaked shoulder, desperate to penetrate her thoughts.

 

“Ben...”

 

There's an image on the surface… almost distinguishable… if he only _pushes_ a little harder.

 

“Ben,” she protests again, more urgently.

 

 _There_ it is.

 

And it is with horror that he sees her once again shackled in the interrogation room of this very ship, weeping and trembling as her dark captor sends questing tendrils of his consciousness to invade her innermost thoughts. The Force grows cold and weighted like a stone between them.

 

He was a monster.

 

He's _still_ a monster.

 

The image vanishes with Rey’s corporeal form, leaving him holding his limp, black cloak. Alarmed, Kylo frantically struggles to regrab the astral thread, but it slips from his grasp and is gone. Only her scent lingers faintly in the room – a mixture of old leather and Ak-trees. It feels like the ground is falling out from underneath him.

 

"Rey?" he tries, his voice hoarse as he feels that small shard of hope slipping through his fingers.

 

Nothing.

 

Reality comes crashing back.

 

For a few hours, he was Ben Solo again, playing with her and their mysterious shared gift.

 

Now he's Kylo Ren once more, the redundant Supreme Leader of the First Order, and he's alone.

 

 

~

 

 

_At ten years of age, Ben Solo is already fluent in Galactic Basic, Ryl and Mando’a. He also speaks a smattering of Huttese – predominantly expletives – learned from his father, much to Mother’s consternation. At every spare moment he studies astronomy datapads, and he collects star maps obsessively, marking his travels with Senator Organa and tracing his flighty father’s assignments, calculating when he might see him again._

 

_It's therefore no surprise to Uncle Luke when the boy inspects the coordinates programmed into his shuttle’s navicomputer and asks, incredulously, “Tython?” The first eight digits are a giveaway._

 

_“Very good, Ben,” Luke appraises._

 

_Mentally, Ben estimates the travel time and distance from Chandrila to the Deep Core. Hanna City fades into a brown landmass as Luke’s shuttle ascends through the atmosphere. He's proud to have been assigned the co-pilot’s duty for this journey – a rare treat on the Falcon with Father – but seems shrouded by a peculiar external energy, as if he were being restrained. He can move freely, but the air is thicker and denser, and gravity has at least doubled. Uncle Luke watches him carefully._

 

_The New Republic Senator’s son is already well-travelled and has visited many of the Core Worlds, but there's a foreboding sense of finality about this journey._

 

_The scene loops like a broken holovid._

 

_Ben observes the numbers Uncle Luke is typing into the navicomputer and exclaims, “Tython?”_

 

_“Very good, Ben.”_

 

Kylo awakens, sensing an ominous presence at his bedside. Glancing up, his blood runs cold. Master Skywalker hovers there, towering over him, lightsaber poised to strike a deathblow. His crazed eyes read murder. The spectre has crossed over from the Netherworld to execute his wayward nephew. Heart galloping behind his ribcage, Kylo wills his own saber into his hand and ignites its amethyst blade, ready to block.

 

Then it isn't Luke, but Rey’s apparition that stands over him, one arm outstretched and fingers splayed at his temple, reaching out with the Force into his sleeping mind.

 

Kylo swings his blade, but it passes through empty air. There's no one there.

 

Because _they're right_ \- the Supreme Leader _has_ gone mad.

 

With a frustrated grunt, he hurls away the weapon and presses the heels of his palms over his eyes. Flashes of darkness return full-force. It's been eight years, but the nightmares still plague him.

 

 

 


	6. d4 0-0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey witnesses the devastation the Jedi Killer left in his wake.

 

 

Her rehearsed pleas sound somewhere between pitiful and ridiculous, even to her own ears.

 

_Ben, I need your help._

 

Okay.

 

 _Ben, I need to fix the weapon you broke… uh,_ we _broke._

 

No.

 

_I’m training to become a Jedi, and a lightsaber is a Jedi’s -_

 

He’d scoff at that. She’s no Jedi, and they both know it.

 

_Please, Ben, help me find the Jedi Temple you destroyed when you turned to the dark side and became Kylo Ren… I must rebuild your grandfather’s saber, if I’m to have any chance when we meet in battle. It’s inevitable. Please._

 

Impossible. Rey kicks frustratedly at a fallen log in her path, wincing at the impact. Tython was easy enough to find; a bluish marble of electromagnetic energy suspended in the nothingness of space. But how was Leia so convinced that Ben would ever guide her the rest of the way? To make such a request will provoke his terrible dark fury at best, and at worst, would most likely be suicide.

 

And if she can’t figure out how to reopen their connection, what then? She’s lost. He can clearly control it, and pursue her as he pleases. She isn’t sure which rattles her more.

 

The perfect wording comes to her much later while she is drifting off to sleep, having tramped aimlessly through the sparse woodlands for hours, now nestled in a thatch of fallen leaves with her back to an Ak-tree trunk. An argument so compelling, he'll never be able to refuse her. She curls into a ball beside her quarterstaff, hugging her knees to her chest; a sleeping posture deep-seated from a childhood of abuse and neglect.

 

By the time she wakes, her prepared speech has evaporated into thin air.

 

 

~

 

 

Nothing went according to plan.

 

It rarely does, around him.

 

Darkness presses in from all sides the instant she severs the connection, trembling and breathless. Her body screams for her to run. If there’s a moon tonight – or many moons, on this foreign planet – its silvery rays don’t penetrate the dense canopy above. The twilight she had mistaken for night passed rapidly, and she has no idea how far from her starship she's wandered. It could be no blacker in a coffin, six feet under and piled with dirt.

 

It was a major triumph. Not only did she initiate the connection, she reached across that binding thread to breach his unsuspecting mind. Rey is no longer a victim. Knowing she now shares that power is exhilarating.

 

Only… it feels like a hollow victory. Guilt gnaws at her conscience for the harrowing memory - _dream_ \- that she invoked to glean the information she needed.

 

He was asleep. Vulnerable.

 

Taking whatever you want from the enemy shouldn’t make you feel guilty.

 

With their roles reversed – when Rey awoke as Kylo Ren’s prisoner – he’d been kneeling across the interrogation cell, patiently waiting for her to rouse, reassuring her with unexpected gentleness that she was his guest. As her captor, he’d been courteous enough to abstain from invading her unconscious mind. Whereas she…

 

...is isolated - on an unknown world - with no other means of reaching her destination, she chides herself bitterly. And Ben would never have helped her locate the temple ruins – not voluntarily, at least.

 

Besides, he'd certainly had no qualms about barging into _her_ mind earlier. She had tried to refuse, and he cast aside her defences with contemptuous ease.

 

Stepping into the gloom robs her of one sense and heightens the others. The soft susurration of branches overhead feels heavy in her ears, along with her own noisy breath. Back on Peveron such a silence would be tranquil, but out here, it is more like the quiet of a graveyard. The sickly-sweet odour of rotting vegetation hangs thickly in the air. Even though the forest stretches for miles, the blackness nurtures a sense of claustrophobia inside her – and her imagination begins to supply horrors to fill the void. Somewhere beneath her feet there’s a narrow, branching path, made uneven by the knotted roots criss-crossing it. If she had a map now, the oppressive darkness would prevent her from using it.

 

But there's a saberstaff, solid and heavy in her fist. Ben's training weapon.

 

Wide-eyed in shock, she reignites its blades.

 

They’ve passed it from hand to hand across millions of parsecs. It occurs to her that this might be an aberration of the cosmic Force; perhaps she ought to just play along. Or maybe if she refuses, the world will right itself. The laws of physics don’t seem to apply through a psionic Force-link. Something like this is beyond the bounds of possibility.

 

The plasma beams cast a soft vermilion glow over the surrounding thicket as she wheels them in experimental arcs through the air, listening to their low-pitched drone and fully expecting them to vanish. Any second now. It’s as real as the quarterstaff holstered to her back.

 

The dark coils of the woods are not so foreboding with a lightsaber in her grasp. If nothing else, it will suffice as a torch.

 

Running her tongue absentmindedly over the backs of her teeth, she begins to retrace her steps. It’s a daunting task. Her sinuses throb, a peculiar sensation that began the moment she entered Tython’s stratosphere. Just nerves, or an overactive imagination, perhaps.

 

It’s her weakness, contending with Ben. What kind of a Jedi knight succumbs to temptation so easily? He upends her world. Everything’s all wrong.

 

He'd invited her to play with him like a child would, and in a moment of insanity, she'd accepted. An enemy doesn’t welcome you with such innocent enthusiasm, or grab you by the wrist and scamper about in circles, grinning at the giddy thrill of each new discovery.

 

An enemy wouldn’t tempt her with mouthwatering aromas – sizzling bacon, fresh bread, _real food_ … unimaginable pleasures of which she will never partake. Nor would an enemy feed her morsels of luscious fruit, all the while staring adoringly as if she had hung the moon and stars. Her chin is still sticky from its syrupy nectar.

 

By saberlight, Rey steps carefully through the forest’s thick maze. Her racing pulse slowly steadies as the distant hills come into view on the horizon, where her starhopper made planetfall.

 

But the guilt doesn’t ease.

 

 _You are magnificent,_ he had told her, solemn and unblinking. Hearing it made her breath hitch. The enemy doesn’t praise your swordsmanship, or offer guidance to refine your footwork. It’s illogical. They wouldn’t wrap their cloak around your shoulders for warmth. They shouldn’t make you want to _stay_. It isn’t even sunup yet, and there are already a thousand more ideas she would like to try with Ben, to explore the limits of their bond.

 

It doesn’t matter. Rey has taken what she needs. The mission is what’s important: protecting the Resistance and wrenching the course of galactic history from the hands of the First Order. Leia placed all their fates with Rey – and whatever happens, she won’t return to them empty-handed.

 

So what, if Ben can summon her at will? She’s severed from him twice. She can shut him out.

 

The packed-dirt path opens into to an expansive moorland scattered with scree and fallen logs. Just a little further to the foothills. When the first orange-hued rays of sunlight fill the sky, she can even make out shallow footprints in the marshy earth – only one set, but winding haphazardly across the terrain. Belting Ben’s weapon, she breaks into a run, leaping over boulders and treetrunks as she tracks her steps. There’s her scout shuttle – and _there’s_ the gnarled Ak-tree she’d used as a training dummy. The one she was pummelling last night while Ben looked on, entertained by her little temper tantrum.

 

An enemy shouldn’t look like he did - all sweaty and tousled in training clothes, grinning crookedly beneath dishevelled hair.

 

And the enemy incites hatred. Not temptation.

 

Her fingers clench around the quarterstaff, white-knuckled from the strength of her grip.

 

What an enemy _would_ do... is steal into a man’s sleeper, violate his unconscious mind and enkindle horrific nightmares, to pillage and plunder the details – leaving their victim terrified and helpless.

 

With a savage growl, she twirls the staff and swings a violent arc into the treetrunk, pivoting her hips to empower the blow. It crunches with the force of impact and splinters in two, rending wood from metal. Her elbows cramp and her hands sting with the reverberation.

 

Because – she’s just as heartless as Kylo Ren.

 

Of _course_ he had attacked. Summoned his violet blade with the Force and sliced through her middle without hesitation. Another grim lesson learned – he can’t injure her through the connection.

 

If Ben was here right now… he’d probably kill her. Better that he’s millions of parsecs away.

 

 _You don’t know your own strength, peanut,_ Finn ribbed her once during a sparring session on Peveron. _Any faster and you’ll need a training droid instead._ Like droids grow on trees. She misses him already. They’d found each other in a moment of desperation and together they’ve survived impossible odds, only to be separated again and again. She wonders what Finn would say if he could see her now.

 

Heart sinking in shame, she examines the ruined quarterstaff that spared her life too many times to count on Jakku. _Temper:_ another attribute unbecoming of a Jedi.

 

Then, hurling its two halves to the ground, she storms away, kicking the cracked communicator aside and climbing back aboard the starhopper. Is there no end to her ineptitude? She yanks the hatch open with such force that its hinges shudder. Just her luck, to have touched down on this makerforsaken rock at the polar opposite of where she needs to be. Obtained at such great risk, she’ll never forget the twelve numbers she punches into the navicomputer.

 

 

~

 

 

How a one-man starhopper has escaped notice by the entire First Order fleet remains something of a mystery. The stagnant air inside the cockpit and toneless whining of its sublight engines are lulling her to sleep, despite her efforts. Though her eyes are scratchy and heavy-lidded, she can’t afford to let her guard down. Should Ben figure out what she’s done – he’ll retaliate.

 

A Jedi never stumbles. That’s what Leia used to say, anyway. The Skywalkers were a family of warriors; wills of iron, souls of steel. Brave. At Niima Outpost, everything had been so simple. No one to answer to but herself. No responsibility, no rebellion looking to her as their last bastion of hope, and certainly no unbidden… _sentiments_ … toward the enemy.

 

Reaching up to unhook Leia’s dice, she traces a finger reverently over the designs imprinted into each face. This ill-conceived plan might really succeed now. Every single one of Luke’s students would have owned a lightsaber, and with a little luck, something will remain in the wreckage for her.

 

Whatever magic these dice encapsulated for Han Solo, she prays there’s a little left over.

 

The journey is dull and monotonous. Another twenty minutes of being pent up like a caged animal, mired in self-doubt and forcing herself to stay awake. Vast oceans and continents, both an inconspicuous muddy brown, coalesce into a featureless blur beneath the shuttle as it skims through Tython's atmosphere.

 

Rey doesn't know what she'd expected. A treasure trove of kyber crystals, perhaps; ready-made weapons lined up and ready for the picking. A simple ten-step guide to mastering one's Jedi powers, technically precise and easy to read. Her enthusiasm wanes the moment she disembarks; the scorched ruins the Jedi Killer left in his wake aren't much of anything any more, neglected and overgrown with stunted, scraggly vegetation. If not for Ben's coordinates, she wouldn't have recognised it at all. It's just as bleak, just as dull as Leia described it.

 

Her well-honed scavenger eyes pick out fourteen discrete piles of rubble nestled into the valley, surrounding a larger structure of collapsed stone pillars. Everything is blackened, covered in ash and dried scrub. The entire settlement has been razed to the ground. This place has clearly been devoid of life for a very long time.

 

Rubbing her sinuses - that maddening buzz is still there - she stuffs her NN-14 into her belt and shuffles down the escarpment. The closer she gets, the stronger the aura of hostility. Like the ruins themselves are trying to repel her. Every step feels wrong, and the sense of betrayal is overwhelming.

 

She’s puffing by the time she reaches the settlement; blackened, dilapidated husks of rotting wood and hewn stone. There's a tug, something icy that tightens her stomach, compelling her toward the fallen temple. She eyes its wreckage with rising trepidation.

 

The Sacred Texts told of Force ghosts - both Jedi and Sith. Leia believed in them without question. What were her words of warning, exactly? _Great darkness lingers there. It's incredibly dangerous._

 

Alongside the temple ruins, five evenly spaced stones protrude from the soil like a jagged row of teeth. Messy writing is carved into each. She approaches them curiously, squinting to read the inscriptions.

 

_I took him and a dozen students, and began a training temple._

 

All at once Rey’s heart sinks, understanding what she is staring at:

 

_**SONIEE THAYN OF KESH** _

_**SHE IS WITH THE FORCE** _

 

the tombstones of Ben’s victims.

 

 _He_ tainted this place, transformed Master Skywalker's sacred praxeum into a graveyard.

 

Her fingers slide over his training weapon again. No wonder she feels unwelcome here.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers meekly, feeling watched. The admission lifts something off her shoulders by virtue of being said, though she can't sense another living soul anywhere close by - even the birdlife and insects seem to have deserted this place. Ignoring the accompanying hammer of guilt, she grabs the first chunk of rubble from the nearest heap and shoves it away. Got to start somewhere.

 

Worse than a scavenger, she feels like a grave-robber now. Another strike against her - a Jedi wouldn't go ransacking the resting place of their forebearers like this. Master Skywalker would turn in his grave. In these desperate times, she has walked the tightrope of her own morality much too often already. It's not an invasion of privacy if they're already dead, she tells herself repeatedly, and as for Kylo Ren… If the Supreme Leader wanted to stop her, he’d just have to fly down here and say so.

 

No one ever need know.

 

Hauling away rocks and planks, Rey forages through the detritus. All this desperation for a Jedi weapon has reduced her to a desert rat again, she notes with wry amusement, quickly forgotten with the sudden bite of a splinter from a broken beam. She hisses out a curse. Anyone else would've come prepared with gloves, or wraps – more appropriate attire for her old profession.

 

Or… she could use the Force to clear the rubble. But it seems disrespectful for such a low act, especially here. Gods know she's already overstepped enough.

 

Pinching the splinter out, she continues to rummage.

 

 

~

 

 

The sun is dipping below the horizon when she decides to call it a day. She can barely keep her eyes open, and shifting all the debris from just one hut was exhausting. Thirteen more piles await for tomorrow’s work - perhaps she'll fare better with those. Everything she unearthed, she meticulously arranged in front of the wreckage: threadbare robes, a wooden soup-ladle and a set of rusty, unidentifiable utensils. Writing implements, maybe - but no reading material of any kind.

 

No kyber crystals or weapons, either.

 

Dragging together a few planks, she assembles a crude shelter for the night. The rest will do as firewood. Scrambling back up the scarp to her starship in pitch-darkness now would be a fool’s errand; her muscles are already screaming fatigue, and who knows what creatures lurk in the night, hungry for fresh meat?

 

 

~

 

 

As the night wears on, her eyelids grow heavier while she basks in radiant heat from her campfire, its flames licking high in the air. If the Aionomica had anything to say about burning the relics of a sacred praxeum just to stay warm - it'd be another strike against her, no doubt. She's ravenous, but in all her enthusiasm to hunt for treasure, carelessly left all her rations stowed away in the starhopper's hold. Her belly gurgles in protest. Overhead, two gold-limned crescent moons illuminate the sky, and the earthy, rich fragrance of the forest fills her nostrils.

 

It must have been beautiful, training here. She tries to imagine how their colony might have looked in its heyday. How differently things might have turned out, had _she_ been here when

 

_tressspasssser_

 

The eldritch hiss comes from nowhere - but it's the wind. Only the wind. Her gaze flickers to Luke’s temple, its outline shimmering in the firelight, then to the headstones. They're like long-felled padawans, standing sentinel and judging her for invading the sacrosanctity of their desolate commune. She can’t shake the eerie sensation of being kept under scrutiny.

 

Ben would have been Luke’s star pupil. _I’ve seen this raw strength only once before, in Ben Solo._ It's easy to imagine him sparring in the clearing between huts, drilling the velocities alongside padawans from all over the cosmos, outshining them all. He's a spectacular fighter. There's so much she could learn from him.

 

Her sleep-deprived mind wanders further, to last night; how warm his body was, embracing her, his huge hands as gentle as they are in dreams. The way she made him chuckle, just by waving her arms through thin air and demanding they stay put where the fallen trees inexplicably smelled salty and delicious. Ben's laughter is a wonderful sound - something secret, just for her. At the thought, all the hairs behind her neck prickle, gooseflesh erupts on her arms and the crackling fire seems to dampen, as if she were underwater.

 

Slowly, she looks up. Slowly, she turns pale.

 

Ben's towering silhouette now stands right where she imagined him sparring. He's fixated on the bare earth beside the fireplace, a malicious glint in his eyes and a glowing, double-bladed melee weapon clenched tightly in each hand. It sends a stab of ice through her gut.

 

_Oh kriff -_

 

Jerked from her exhausted stupor, Rey leaps to her feet.

 

The weighty thickness of dread grows larger in her throat as she tries to look him in the eye and fails. Squaring her stance, she wills herself to become an immovable object. Shoot first, or die. _“What are you doing here?!”_ she bleats.

 

He's overwhelmed her mental defences. He _knows._ The wave of realisation is paralysing. Rey’s eyes dart frantically from the distant trees to the shadowy temple to the piles of debris, remembering how she trailed him around the Star Destroyer with her feet firmly planted to the ground, wondering how she can possibly hide from him now.

 

 

 

 


	7. Bf4 d5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is hunted by one of his remaining Knights.

 

 

He glares at the young officer stretched prone on the deck. Trained by Phasma herself, this cocksure simpleton had boasted to his comrades that he could take down the illustrious Supreme Leader with his laser axe at sparring. Kylo’s reputation for relegating his training partners to the medicentre usually deters any potential combatants, but he suspects this particular halfwit has even taken bets, volunteered himself while under the influence of too much Tevraki whiskey. He also bragged of his exceptional skill with the Kyuzo petar, still holstered now at his waistband, unused.

 

The foolhardy boy still reeks of liquor. Correlian courage. He hadn’t even recognised his sparring rival without the helmet; he’d assumed this ordinary man was some sort of test, to prove himself worthy before taking on the almighty Kylo Ren.

 

Of course, Kylo can not resist a human opponent, and as always, he can not control himself in combat, once the fire in his belly is ignited. The young officer initially taunted him and swung his axe brazenly, but rapidly retreated - almost cowering behind his weapon - once he realised how quickly the dark behemoth could _move,_ how his swift strikes blurred the distinction between weapon and wielder.

 

Kylo should have stopped then.

 

He kicks the prostrated figure with the tip of his boot. The groan in response reassures him that he is at least still alive. He carefully extracts the double-bladed knives from their holsters, inspecting them and sliding his long fingers through their centres, considers whether this boy will be of any use in future, then calls for assistance on his wrist-mounted comlink.

 

“What are you doing here?!”

 

He starts at Rey’s accusatory tone. Her outline shimmers, boots buried within the body before him. She is livid. His molars and sinuses instantly hum again uncomfortably, that disconcerting sensation from last night that he can not quite place. He has not summoned her, but from her incensed expression, neither has she summoned him – not willingly, at least.

 

“ _Where are you?!”_ he bellows, and her eyes flash with fear. She vanishes.

 

The officer whimpers feebly as Kylo hefts his limp form from the deck.

 

 

~

 

 

Every night after that, he waits for her, and with every passing day that she doesn't come, his despondency grows. He knows what despair tastes like; he has breathed its essence, swallowed its sour liquid, felt it swell through his veins. Has he crossed some arbitrary line, committed some unforgivable sin so soon? The lingering memory of Master Snoke admonishes him for his foolishness, displaying vulnerability and fraternising with the enemy for a pair of pretty eyes - but the child within him, beaten into submission for so long, cries out for a kindred spirit. Someone to be lonely with.

 

He won’t initiate contact this time. He won’t. He wants her to need _him_.

 

But there's nothing.

 

 

~

 

 

Captain Edrison Peavey’s portly image flickers to life on the primary command bridge, where the masked Supreme Leader and General Hux impatiently await his transmission. His much younger adjutant fidgets nervously by his side in the hologram.

 

“Report,” Kylo blares.

 

The captain bows deeply. “Supreme Leader Ren. General Hux.” He turns to directly address the latter. “We have identified a suspected Resistance cell on Rakata Prime, sir. Energy emissions and radio signals were detected several days ago.”

 

“Are you certain, Captain?” Hux replies.

 

“The First Order has no current operations on Rakata Prime, sir. Our nearest construction site is the Star Forge.” The giant automated shipyard was re-established during Snoke’s reign, churning out an endless supply of warships, droids and armament and drawing its energy and matter from the star of the Rakata system. It is one of the First Order’s centres of greatest productivity.

 

“Who are they talking to?” inquires Hux quietly.

 

“We don’t know, sir. Their transmissions are encrypted.”

 

“They will be preparing an attack on the Star Forge,” Ren interjects, his voice stark and mechanical through the helmet.

 

Peavey nods. “Yes, my lord.”

 

Hux purposedly steps between Ren and the holoprojector. “You are aboard a _Star Destroyer,_ Captain, are you not?”

 

“Yes, General. The Harbinger.”

 

“Then _obliterate them_ , you fool,” he spits petulantly.

 

Peavey pauses. “There are… complications, sir.”

 

“What _comp-li-cations_?”

 

“They have a hostage,” blurts the adjutant.

 

“Their comm/scan must have alerted them to our presence,” Peavey adds hesitantly. “By the time the Harbinger was in position to fire, they were transmitting to _us_.”

 

Kylo knows, even before Peavey confirms his suspicions, the identity of their captive. His knight was assigned to oversee operations in the Tempered Wastes - a largely void area of space in the Unknown Regions – to protect and defend Star Forge from the Resistance and any other factions threatening the First Order. How has he allowed himself to be captured? He was Snoke’s most self-confident disciple; his strength in the dark Force, formidable. Thalaam Ren would not be so easily overpowered. His holographic image, a black-cloaked figure bedecked head-to-toe in durasteel plate armour, briefly replaces Peavey’s.

 

“We await your orders, sir,” the captain finishes meekly.

 

Hux leers at Ren. “The Knights are under your jurisdiction, _Supreme Leader_." His tone is indulgent.

 

The Finalizer is already traversing the Unknown Regions. The Lehon System is less than ten parsecs away; one standard day by hyperspace travel at most.

 

“Take us there,” Kylo instructs, inciting an instant flurry of activity among the bridge crew. “I will deal with Thalaam and the Resistance vermin myself.” He addresses Peavey. “Deploy one transporter. One only. I want prisoners taken – the youngest and easiest to capture. Hold them for interrogation. You will receive further instructions upon our arrival.”

 

Clearly displeased with Ren’s orders, General Hux opens his mouth to protest – and finds he cannot speak. He tugs distractedly at his collar, which is all of a sudden too constricting. A purplish hue blossoms across his cheeks and forehead; whether he's infuriated, or from the subtle Force-choke in which he is held, Kylo is uncertain.

 

“Very good, my lord.” Peavey bows again. The hologram fades.

 

Kylo releases the general.

 

“There will be others, Ren!” Hux splutters, immediately rubbing his throat.

 

“Yes.”

 

“You will extract the locations of each and every rebel base from the prisoners,” he commands, bristling. “I _will_ wipe the galaxy of this insurgent scum!” He about-faces and storms away, followed by a retinue of ‘troopers. “The First Order will reign supreme!”

 

The Supreme Leader does not take orders from his vainglorious weakling of a general. Not any more. Kylo watches him march away, bewildered as to how Hux still perceives the Resistance as a legitimate threat. As an afterthought, he reaches out, more to assert his authority than anything else. Hux freezes mid-step.

 

“Inform the bounty hunter of our change of course,” he advises, then waits a beat – feeling the general struggle under his Force-grip – before releasing him again.

 

The redheaded parasite mutters something indignant under his breath. The cadence of his boots fades as he hurries through the passageway and disappears out of sight.

 

Kylo has considered killing him no less than six times today.

 

 

~

 

 

The fracking bounty hunter intercepts the Star Destroyer one standard day later as it enters Lehon’s orbit, demanding an audience immediately with the Supreme Leader. No doubt to negotiate a higher bounty for the inconvenience, Kylo surmises. His timing couldn't be worse. They are still out of range for radio communications with the remote archipelago on Rakata Prime, where a rogue Resistance cell holds his Knight and former fellow Jedi padawan prisoner. The Falcon is unloaded onto the upper flight deck, but there is little requirement for data-retrieval droids; the rebel insurgents have obviously used its computers for target-practice before abandoning the freighter. He considers simply ordering the executions of the duros and his crew, sparing himself the usual tedious negotiations and empty threats, but Bane’s gang have proven themselves too valuable, hunting and eliminating wanted individuals that have somehow evaded the First Order.

 

Absentmindedly, he traces the carvings on the armrest of his grotesquely oversized obsidian throne, modelled after Snoke’s, awaiting his visitor. He hates this, the veneer of sovereignty, physically occupying the space demanded and fashioned by his former master – a symbol of opulence foreign to the true Sith order. Much like Snoke’s golden khalat auropyle robes and black diamond ring.

 

Kylo has read the disappointment on the faces of many a guest who has sought an audience with the fearsome Supreme Leader, only to be met by a conflicted young man, uncomfortable in his own skin.

 

Not today.

 

The turbolift whines faintly and figures emerge from the hallway. Kylo watches from behind the visor of his helmet. To his surprise, he senses a being approaching with a much more intense Force-signature than he would have anticipated from a duros mercenary. A black-cloaked figure is hustled into the throne room, its wrists secured by binders, flanked by Mitaka, a second junior officer and a bevy of Stormtroopers, one of whom digs the barrel of his E-11 blaster into its back. The bounty hunter is tall – very tall – dominating its armed escorts, its face completely obscured beneath the hood of its cloak.

 

The room temperature seems to drop several degrees.

 

“Your bounty hunter, my lord,” reports Mitaka.

 

Kylo rises to his feet.

 

Without prompting, the creature kneels before the Supreme Leader, bowing its head. Kylo can feel powerful currents of the Force roiling and churning from it as he strides closer. The ‘troopers are obviously aware of it, too – not the way he is, but as living beings in the Force, they can not help but be affected. They point their blaster-barrels at its form uncertainly.

 

“Hail, Supreme Leader,” it says. The deep baritone voice is strangely familiar.

 

Kylo squares his shoulders. That irritating tic of his left eye has returned and his jaw works nervously beneath the mask. “Show yourself, bounty hunter.”

 

Without hesitation, the figure lifts its bound wrists – Kylo glimpses long, azure clawed fingers on the left, a bio-mech hand on the right – and pulls back its hood. His ice-blue lekku spill forth from the garment and come to rest against his shoulders. He does not look at Ren, but dips his head again submissively. The tip of his right lek, however, rises in greeting. He no longer wears his Knight’s suit of armour.

 

“Kopecz,” Kylo’s mechanised voice acknowledges.

 

The blue Twi’lek cranes his neck up to meet his leader’s gaze. With a jolt, Kylo notices how his eyes have changed; instead of the deep black pools he knew so well from the Jedi Temple, they are now the eyes of the Sith, yellow irises flecked through and rimmed with crimson. The same eyes Kylo fears he will see peering back at him from the ‘fresher mirror every morning. He has not seen Kopecz’s unmasked face in years.

 

“ _Nerra_ ,” replies the Knight calmly.

 

Kylo steps forward, menacingly close, towering over his kneeling form. His gloved fingers fumble past the lightsaber at his belt, unclipping the lightwhip. “You are not my brother,” he admonishes.

 

Unintimidated, the Knight actually smiles, revealing two jagged rows of pointed teeth. “It has been too long, Kylo Ren.”

 

His smile quickly fades as Kylo ignites Koya’s lightwhip, trailing its plasma blade on the floor as he thrusts its hilt close to Kopecz’s neck accusingly, close enough to feel its heat and hear its hum.

 

“You have come to challenge me.” He cannot fight with it, not yet, but he imagines looping its length around his adversary’s neck, jerking it tight.

 

In response, the Twi’lek tilts his head back, exposing his throat. “I mean you no harm, my lord,” he speaks sotto voce. “And I do not fear the afterlife.” He closes his eyes, as if anticipating a strike.

 

Kylo’s subordinates observe them dubiously, still training their blasters on the guest.

 

“Where is the duros?” Kylo demands.

 

“I relieved him of his duty, sire. I wish to collect my bounty.”

 

“You killed him.”

 

“Yes, Supreme Leader, him and his crew. They serve an organised crime clan. Many innocents have suffered under their reign.” Kopecz frowns. “They defy the First Order.”

 

Kylo edges the red beam closer to Kopecz’s throat. “How?”

 

“They are a law unto themselves, sire.” As he speaks, his lekku weave across each other, communicating an entirely different message. _Dismiss your guards, brother. I must speak with you alone._ “Did I not deliver your enemy’s starship, as requested?”

 

Retracting the weapon slightly, Kylo crouches to address his Knight at eye-level. “Why should I release you?” he asks under his breath. “What assurance do I have that you have not come to kill me?”

 

“Because I am forever indebted to you, my lord,” he answers without a beat of hesitation. “You succeeded where I have failed.” Kopecz eyes him beseechingly and raises his bound hands, palms up as in surrender. The loose sleeves of his cloak flutter to his elbows, unsheathing more of his robotic right forearm and hand. “I am at peace. I have had my vengeance.”

 

“I didn’t kill him for _you._ ”

 

“I understand. It was for… _another._ But I am no less grateful.”

 

“ _Get out of my head, Kopecz_.” Kylo’s voice is low, threatening.

 

He withdraws the lightwhip, raising his left hand to the Twi’lek’s forehead, delving into his thoughts. He hears the Sith Code, whispered again and again, and… nothing. A deliberate barrier? He pushes harder, forcing his way deeper into Kopecz’s consciousness. There is still nothing… but a black, infinite abyss – a vacuum threatening to consume him, should he pry any further. His brow furrows in frustration. What is this Knight concealing?

 

“There is only the void now, _nerra_ ,” Kopecz whispers sorrowfully, answering his unasked question.

 

Rising to his full height, Kylo dismisses his staff.

 

They are immediately interrupted.

 

 

~

 

 

Peavey reports three junior Resistance soldiers imprisoned aboard the Harbinger, awaiting interrogation, and confirms all survivors of the single platoon of Stormtroopers deployed to Rakata Prime have returned to the ship. He anticipates orders to deploy a full battalion and overpower the rebel scourge, as does General Hux.

 

Thalaam’s image blinks to life over the HoloNet, still suited in a plate harness. In the periphery of the projection, Kylo notes at least two blaster barrels pressed to the gorget of his armour. The Knight implores the merciful, great Supreme Leader to shut down operations at the Star Forge immediately, withdraw First Order armed forces and free the slaves throughout the Tempered Wastes. His voice, while distorted through the vocoder of his helmet, has a slurred, eerie musical quality to it, as though he were under the influence of a hallucinogen or sedative. Kylo contemplates whether the rebels could possibly have access to neural disruptors or similar restraining devices; with so few Force-wielders left, surely the technology is obsolete?

 

Having been escorted to the primary command bridge by armed ‘troopers once again at Kylo’s insistence that he bear witness, Kopecz Ren observes their exchange dispassionately.

 

“The First Order does not submit to the demands of Resistance scum!” the Supreme Leader thunders at his Knight’s faceless hologram. “Nor will I concede to acts of terrorism!”

 

He gives the order; even Hux is taken aback.

 

Thalaam Ren calls him brother, and Ben, and pleads for his life.

 

The attack is immediate, brutal and vicious. The Finalizer’s enormous turbolaser cannons roar and for an instant the bridge is bathed in rose-coloured light. Through the viewport, the crew observes a massive conflagration erupting on Rakata Prime’s crust, obliterating the Resistance base and all its surrounding islands, leaving a fiery hurricane of destruction in its wake. The ocean envelops the crater that extends for kilometres beyond the blast zone.

 

Kylo senses Thalaam’s death as a brief tremor in the Force. He glares pointedly at the remaining Knight, gauging his reaction.

 

Seeing Kopecz’s disappointment in him, Kylo almost feels an unexpected twinge of regret. The Twi’lek’s gaze is downcast, mournful. “Zekk was loyal to you, sire.” He speaks in a hushed tone to the deck. “There are those who would usurp you for your power… but he was not one of them.”

 

“Who?”

 

Kopecz’s cerulean lekku writhe and twist again. _Please. I need to speak with you alone._ He lifts his restrained wrists; his binders spontaneously fall away and clatter to the deck. He could have freed himself with the Force at any time.

 

Kylo grasps his Knight firmly by his flesh-and-blood elbow and leads him away. “I will inspect the merchandise before your bounty is honoured,” he declares.

 

“Of course, my lord.”

 

The gaggle of ‘troopers moves to follow, but Kylo raises one gloved hand. “Leave us.”

 

 

~

 

 

He halts abruptly the moment they enter the sixth hangar, taking in the grey, dilapidated monstrosity that seems absurdly out of place among hundreds of gleaming black TIE-fighers.

 

_Han Solo's ship!_

 

It had been his first enthralling experience of flight, his first taste of piloting. A little frisson of excitement blooms in his chest at seeing it up close again, even now, after more than twenty years. So many memories – tearing through its tunnels with Chewbacca hot on his heels, shrieking with laughter; assisting his father with the endless repairs it always seemed to need, and learning to co-pilot alongside Han, who could otherwise afford such precious little time for his son. Recollections he had hoped to put an end to when he ordered that it be blown out of the sky.

 

Kylo catches himself, registering Kopecz’s proximity and barricading his thoughts.

 

The Millennium Falcon is a battered shell of its former self, missing panels and thrusters, misshapen and charred in parts, a testament to a hard life. Inside, it is bereft of personnel. Sensing the two dark Force-wielders’ approach like a seething miasma, the scuttles and tech staff have made themselves scarce.

 

Kylo climbs its boarding ramp in two short strides and charges directly into the cockpit, where two bulky IN-4 information droids have their extendible jacks plugged into what remains of its computers. It is otherwise almost exactly as he remembers it from twenty years ago, when he last occupied the co-pilot’s chair. He stares wistfully at the vacant pilot’s seat, glances up at the toggles above it where Han hung his lucky gold dice. None of his personal adornments remain now. Kylo wonders how many million parsecs the ship has travelled since then, how many times it has lurched into and out of hyperspace without disintegrating into space junk, and changed hands between gamblers, thieves and cheaters.

 

Pivoting on his heel, he is alarmed to see Kopecz watching him through narrowed eyes from the cockpit access tunnel, a faint, knowing smile playing on his lips.

 

“Piece of junk,” Kylo barks dismissively, pushing past him, following the tunnel to the communal space.

 

The blue Twi’lek trails him languidly. Kopecz is so tall, he is forced to stoop to pass through the bulkhead door frame. “Is everything to your liking, sire?” He settles on the couch, running long claws over the circular face of the dejarik holochess table before him. Kylo catches a stray thought: the Supreme Leader seems to be taking much too keen an interest in detail for a rebel freighter destined for a junkyard.

 

“If its databanks give us the locations of any remaining Resistance cells,” Kylo stipulates. If Kopecz senses his dissimulation, he does not react.

 

“The Resistance is obsolete, as you are well aware,” the Twi’lek chastises gently. “You are fighting a war you have already won, my lord. Your redheaded subordinate’s battle, perhaps. The First Order faces a much greater threat; one that currently operates unchecked throughout the galaxy.”

 

Kylo ignores him. “What do you want with your bounty? Does the First Order not provide for you, everything you need?”

 

“Sit with me, Ben,” Kopecz beckons.

 

“That is my old name. You will address me as Kylo Ren.”

 

The Knight’s lips curve upward in something close to a grin again and he motions to the couch opposite him across the chessboard.

 

Kylo sits reproachfully. “No one calls me that.”

 

Kopecz raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “But that’s not entirely true, sire.”

 

“Get out of my head, or I’ll have yours!” Kylo snaps.

 

The Twi’lek inhales slowly, unperturbed. He seems impervious to threats.

 

“What do you want with your karking bounty?!”

 

He meets Kylo’s unwavering stare calmly. “The humans of Bothawui suffer unspeakable hardships, Kylo,” he says. “Starvation, disease, pestilence. Poverty. Without supply runs, they are at the mercy of pirates and criminal syndicates for survival. Children become chattel slaves almost as soon as they are able to walk, sold by their parents for a scrap of food. Gang-violence and rape have become a way of life. They pay for their survival with their freedom, their families, their dignity. It is… untenable.”

 

“Bothawui would not submit to First Order control,” Kylo argues.

 

Kopecz hangs his head. “You would not wish such a life on anyone, my lord. Even so.”

 

“How is this of your concern, _Byt_? From what I hear, you have not left Fralideja in years, save for your annual pilgrimage to the Mid Rim.” The reclusive Knight has jurisdiction over the Atravis Sector in the Outer Rim, but spends his days in isolation devoutly studying the Sith religion, residing in the temple on Mustafar. His military duties have been largely delegated to his First Officer.

 

He nods acknowledgement at the sound of his true name and his glittering yellow eyes bore into Kylo’s. “They are _her_ people. Her kin. If I can ease their suffering, even if only for a short while...”

 

His gaze refocuses somewhere on the far wall, so intently that Kylo turns around to follow it. The very air seems to ripple and distort, then a faintly glowing red phantasm begins to materialise. It is hard to make out its detail from behind the visor of his helmet; his gloved fingertips rise to the release mechanism at his jawline and with a brief _hiss_ , he lifts it away. The crimson blur gradually takes shape, forming the outline of a stout, short-statured figure, before her features clarify – full, rosy cheeks, an oversized, beak-like nose, plump lips and a tangle of short black curls tumbling across her ears and forehead. Not at all beautiful, not by traditional standards, but the mischievous sparkle in her cobalt-blue eyes gives her face an intriguing, endearing quality.

 

Kylo shivers, recognising the face. “A Force ghost?” he breathes. He has read of such things, but never witnessed it and did not believe it to be possible - especially among the Sith.

 

Kopecz shakes his head. His eyes glisten and his deep voice quavers. “An illusion, _nerra_. Nothing more. But she haunts me still.” Tears spill in twin lines down his cheeks. “Kira. My Kira. May her soul be at peace.” His azure lekku twist on themselves, crossing once at his sternum and back again over his heart.

 

Kylo shifts uneasily.

 

The Jedi Order forbade such intimate attachment to another; he had long suspected that this was Byt’s primary motivation to abandon Master Luke’s academy and follow Ben into the darkness, and with him, his ebullient, starry-eyed lover and his discontented twin sister. It was Byt’s decision, he reminds himself uncomfortably, but guilt washes over him nonetheless. Join Ben Solo’s revolt, or be slaughtered and left to rot beside the burning temple on Tython. But Snoke had been displeased with Ben’s selection of potential apprentices. Kira’s light burned too brightly, and the old humanoid saw fit to extinguish it.

 

“I’m sorry, my brother.”

 

The Twi’lek drops his face into his outstretched palms, wincing at the sensation of metal against his right cheek. Kylo extends a gloved hand, wanting to touch his arm and offer comfort, but the gesture feels too foreign to his nature and he awkwardly retracts it again. Instead, he sits in silence, watching his old friend grieve quietly. In his peripheral vision, Kira’s apparition dissolves into the rarefied air.

 

After a time, Kopecz raises his swollen, tear-stained face, noticing for the first time that Kylo is unmasked. Ever since the Supremacy’s destruction, the new Supreme Leader rarely ventures out without his helmet; it affords him an air of intimidation and fearsomeness that his ruined face lacks. “Your scar,” he observes miserably.

 

Kylo does not reply.

 

“... _her_ scar,” he adds, voicing Kylo’s thoughts.

 

“Byt...” he warns.

 

The Knight clasps his hands together and addresses him imploringly. “My lord, if I may be so bold… If you have found your queen... take her by the hand. Do not allow foolish pride - or anything else - to delay you. Time is short. Life passes us by so quickly, and we know not what fate will bring.”

 

“Attachment is weakness,” Kylo retorts.

 

Kopecz closes his eyes, shakes his head again. “Attachment is all there is.”

 

“Why pursue the Sith religion so passionately, then? Of what value is immortality to you?”

 

Kopecz wipes his face, sets his jaw with resolve. “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” he says.

 

_Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be._

 

“I must maintain hope for order in this universe, under the rule of your First Order, sire,” he continues. “But I am not its Supreme Leader. Only you can effect such change.”

 

They speak for hours. Kopecz is by no means trustworthy; he is an eccentric, misanthropic hermit, at best, but his insights open the Supreme Leader’s mind to possibilities he would never previously have entertained.

 

When he eventually departs the Finalizer, it is with one hundred thousand credits’ bounty.

 

 

~

 

 

The endless black void of space, day in and day out, meddles with the human brain’s diurnal rhythm, but he knows he should be asleep. He cannot remember when last he witnessed a sunrise or sunset, and without the regimented shift-work to which his staff are well-accustomed, sleep incessantly evades him.

 

Instead, Kylo stares blankly at the ceiling of his sparring gym, feeling the cool durasteel deck grating against his back. He has trained for hours, initially to vent frustration, but rapidly devolving into a sort of self-punishment. His shoulders burn with lactic acid; his legs and chest smart from repeated electrocutions and the scattered cauterised gashes resulting from his disheartening ineptitude with his new weapon. Curtains of sweat-damp hair obscure his vision.

 

His self-imposed initiation to lightwhip training has been brutal. It was an impetuous decision to pit himself against his usual fifteen Marksman-H remotes with an unfamiliar weapon. Logic dictated that the three-metre-long flexible plasma blade would make short work of his targets, but lacking any prior experience with whips, he quickly learned that its directional control requires considerable practice and skill. Acrobatic combat with a non-rigid weapon, if it is even possible, is also well beyond his ability. Its only outcome was repeated, self-inflicted wounds as its tip flailed wildly through the air, snapping against him as he sprang and somersaulted over the electricity bolts whizzing from all angles. Frustrated at his own incompetence, he finally deactivated them all using the Force and stretched out, exhausted and panting, on the deck.

 

Through force of habit, he had dialled all of the damned remotes’ settings to “lethal”. He briefly pictured her hazel eyes, cranked them back a few notches.

 

Koya had exceptional prowess with the lightwhip. If not for Ren’s ability to foresee and evade its blows – with no weapon for self-defence – his traitorous Knight would surely have triumphed.

 

Kylo’s hand glides to his throat. The bulging, black haematoma there has softened into an ugly purple bruise over this past fortnight. His fingertips travel down his bare left shoulder and arm, where the skin is cobbled with criss-crossed scars, reminders of fierce duels past and endless years of torturous instruction with Snoke. His whole body is similarly disfigured.

 

He is hideous, he knows.

 

Not that he ever cared, until… His long fingers move to trace the jagged ridge across his right brow and cheek that snakes down his neck and across his collarbone. _Her_ scar.

 

His back seizes and cramps as he forces himself to rise from the floor, dragging a hand through his sweaty hair. Where is she? She has not returned to him in days. Surely the saberstaff that vanished with her obligates her to return? And yet… and yet she was there, in his nightmare of Skywalker, breaching his thoughts as he had hers. A trick of his addled half-sleeping mind, he imagines, but while he yearns to see her again, he is apprehensive, almost fearful. The red thread is thicker now, more vibrant, sparking like a live wire, but he resists the temptation.

 

 

~

 

 

It's difficult to walk.

 

The lacerations throb as he changes position and his muscles scream with every step. His bedside drawer is stuffed with bacta patches, hoarded for such occasions. He hobbles weakly to his chambers, bolts the door and collapses into his bedside chair.

 

There is no one to teach him how to fight with a lightwhip. Tomorrow, he will scour the archives of the Empire for datapads or technical guides, but for such an unconventional weapon, he doubts his chances of finding anything useful. Just as he has no guidance in controlling the strange, new current arcing between his fingertips when he is enraged.

 

Without a mentor, he feels lost. He almost wishes for Master Snoke again. Almost. The old humanoid promised him unfathomable abilities in the Force, with persistence and dedication… absolute power… midi-chlorian manipulation… immortality. He refuses to believe that Snoke’s sole purpose for him was to destroy Skywalker, even if the Knights believe it. For years, as Snoke’s most zealous disciple, Kylo dragged himself back to his quarters from the throne room, his body broken and ravaged from his Master’s sadistic ministrations, but his mind freshly invigorated with the darkness.

 

Eyes shut, Kylo pounds a fist into his wounded thigh again and again, harnesses the searing waves of pain that course through him, and reaches out.

 

There are fifty-five thousand life forms aboard the Star Destroyer. He senses them all. Their Force-signatures are all unique, like snowflakes. The waking Stormtroopers, indoctrinated and programmed as children, exhibit identical thought-processes, deeply ingrained patterns of weaponry and parade and fieldcraft, like living droids. Their hearts beat as one. He hears the pulse of blood beneath the carapaces of their armour. Even the sleeping ‘troopers’ breathing is in sync; their slumber is dreamless.

 

Beyond the self-contained artificial planet that is the Finalizer lies the vastness of space. The hyperborean gloom is tranquil and still on the surface, but underneath he hears the sonorous crackle of stars collapsing and re-forming, feels the perpetual revolution of planets about their central suns and involuting neutron-stars metamorphosing into black holes, swallowing up all matter and energy that dares trespass their event horizons.

 

He floats serenely in the black void.

 

The darkness is wholly immersive, that undercurrent of hatred that lurks in the hearts of all sentient beings; that desperate struggle for survival from inception to death, at the expense of everything and everyone else. There are none pure in the Force.

 

The dark Force binds him inexorably to the galaxy and all of its inhabitants.

 

He fills his lungs, drawing on the atmospheric energy and the life-force from all those aboard the ship, drinking it in. His body thrums with the dark power, and he shudders at the sharp sensation of wounds tingling, flesh regenerating and knitting together.

 

Opening his eyes in a state of calm almost hypnotic, he fixates on a metal flask resting atop his desk, pointing his index finger towards it, taking aim.

 

A single lightning bolt surges from his outstretched finger and knifes across the room. The bottle twitches, then flies into the air as it is struck.

 

 

~

 

 

Resting his forehead against the cool, black screen of the ‘fresher, Kylo luxuriates in the sensation of scalding-hot water sluicing over his shoulders and cascading down his back, gently soothing his aching muscles, reddening his pale skin. Long, hot showers are one of the few indulgences he allows himself in an otherwise ascetic, joyless existence with the First Order.

 

Breathe in… slow.

 

The ‘fresher clouds with mist.

 

Breathe out… slower.

 

The hairs at the back of his neck suddenly prickle and the ambient hum of the ship’s engines and trickling sounds of running water deaden to nothing, the forerunner to a familiar connection. _Frack,_ he's waited so long for her... why _now?_ Kylo faintly hears a little punch of sound, like a gasp, somewhere behind him. He is acutely aware of his nakedness and the myriad of unsightly scars littering his bare skin, but refuses to show vulnerability.

 

“You’re late,” he growls in a low voice, and doesn't turn around.

 

He can feel Rey’s presence at his back for what seems to stretch into an eternity, hear her breathing, but she stays silent. The woman who marked him, who occupies his every waking thought and his every dreaming night.

 

 _Take what you want,_ whispers a sybaritic voice at the back of his mind.

 

He could spin around right now and leap at her like a sabercat in heat, seize her wrists before she can fend him off, drag her under the steaming spray with him, slam her back up against the tiles and…

 

Take everything he needs.

 

A swirl of adrenaline chases through his blood as he imagines giving in to it. Taking. Taking from her. His breathing shallows and his cock is hardening and he’s shivering, despite the searing hot shower. A wonderful, unbearable ache builds between his legs, demanding relief. She's still there.

 

Watching him.

 

Driving his palms hard into the tiles, he wills his body not to move as his mind scrambles for purchase. It's still there, sizzling in the back of his brain; a hot itch he _needs_ to scratch.

 

Kylo stares straight ahead and counts his heartbeats until she severs the connection.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quote:** George Santayana “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”


	8. Qb3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a fine line between predator and prey.
> 
> *Warning - DO NOT READ before bed if you expect to get any sleep.*

 

The silence is charged between them. Rey grips the blaster at her waistband, futile though it was on Ahch-To.

 

He’s already armed and advancing much too quickly, clutching something resembling brass knuckles with curved double blades, transfixed on the packed soil by her boots. For the briefest moment she studies him curiously – like spotting a rare breed of creature in the wilderness, or the irresistible urge to touch a dancing flame. But this is no bird with bright feathers – he is one of the deadliest beings in the galaxy. Formidable and awe-inspiring. Rey’s only consolation is that he does not appear to be hunting _her,_ but she is afraid for whoever lies at her feet on his side of the connection.

 

Momentarily distracted, Ben lifts his gaze to hold hers. She can sense his jumping manic energy through the bond, like a hungry nexu ready to pounce.

 

“ _Where are you?!”_

 

His roar rings out through the valley. Whatever he was examining before, he’s furious now, his muscles coiled and bunched. Unwittingly, she is shrinking away, her boots sliding backwards through the earth until her thigh strikes the lip of her makeshift dwelling.

 

The moment falls away. His burly form vanishes, and she can breathe again.

 

For a second, the low timbre of his voice continues to echo across the distant hills. With her blaster barrel now aimed squarely at the vacant clearing between huts where he appeared, Rey wonders whether any other living soul here could possibly perceive the sound.

 

Her answer comes immediately as a shrill, childish cackle that seems to emanate from both the campfire itself and the distant temple ruins.

 

She shudders. A strangled yelp erupts from her throat. Pivoting on her heels, she trains the NN-14 barrel from the temple to the mounds of rubble, her eyes flickering wildly between shadows, scanning her surrounds. Who knows what lurks in the gloom, stirred by Ben’s voice, that might venture out under the camouflage of darkness? Living, or… otherwise? On Jakku, she would never have dared leave the safety of her AT-AT after dusk, in case a swarm of prowling gnaw-jaws mistook her for a lost happabore calf wandering through the shifting sands and made a meal of her. With no such robust shelter now, she is painfully aware of how alone and exposed she is.

 

“Who’s there?” she squeaks.

 

Silence.

 

Rey draws a shaky breath, her opposite hand coming up to steady the blaster, taking aim at a distant copse of trees.

 

“ _Who’s there?”_ she bellows into the darkness. “Show yourself!”

 

There is no response but the crackle of firewood, sending sparking embers dancing into the air. Something shifts in her peripheral vision and she whirls to face the tombstones, but it is nothing more than the flickering firelight reflected from their smooth surfaces. No sound apart from her own rapid, shallow breathing.

 

It must have been Ben, she considers, slumping to her knees. He’s toying with her somehow. Better him than… whatever wraiths might inhabit this hostile place. Ben is light years away and – so long as he can’t touch her - incapable of hurting her through the connection. Nor should he have cause to, provided he remains oblivious to her location.

 

Or... a figment of her imagination? She’s desperately hungry and has not allowed herself any sleep in two standard days. An unavoidable burden, journeying alone in space with no crew to keep watch. She’s jumping at shadows. It wouldn’t be the first time. If Finn were here – rational, levelheaded Finn – or Poe, or Leia, they would urge her to rest. There is much work to be done tomorrow.

 

She should have negotiated to bring Finn with her on this ill-conceived mission. He will poke fun at her later for being so jittery.

 

If she sees him again.

 

No, _when_ she sees him again.

 

With this in mind, Rey pinches her fingers over her throbbing sinuses and shuffles backwards into the tiny hollow beneath the beams she has cobbled together. It will afford her little protection, but at least anything attempting to breach the fragile structure while she sleeps will alert her to its presence. Laying her satchel out as a pillow, she places the blaster behind her back with Ben’s training saber and huddles into a ball. Her hands clutch at her shoulders as if to ween some comfort from her own embrace. It has never worked in the past, as a child with only her own arms to provide solace – it’s no surprise that it doesn’t work now.

 

She can handle this. Force ghosts, if they exist, can not physically interfere with the living realm. Besides, she has already survived so much worse to get to this point. Stealing Kylo Ren’s lightsaber from his own belt and charging Snoke with it, for kriff’s sake. Slaughtering four elite Praetorian Guards with negligible training and only the Force to guide her blade. She’s rappelled into the bellies of countless Star Destroyers in pitch-darkness and scrambled out, near-unscathed, every single time. Even when rival scavengers threatened her for her treasures. Even when her frayed rope unraveled and gave out.

 

This, by comparison, should be nothing.

 

Rey hugs her knees to her chest and stares into the flames, reaching instinctively to pat the soil behind her again, reassuring herself his saberstaff is still there.

 

~

 

On the second day, she fossicks through the detritus of another two huts, tossing splintered wooden planks into one pile for firewood, heaving rocks and broken duracrete bricks into another until her hands are red and raw.

 

More threadbare clothing, albeit in better condition than her own. Stained, weather-worn robes. A leather belt. More writing implements and an opaque, glassy structure, possibly an inkwell. Rey speculates which of the clothes she has unearthed might have been Ben’s; none would fit him now. His shoulders are too broad and his arms, too thick.

 

Bundling her scavenged belongings into a swag, she carries them dutifully back up the scarp to the scout shuttle, retrieving an ancient-looking pair of welding gloves and enough ration packs for three days.

 

On the third day, she only manages another two huts.

 

The tattered leather gloves are useless by the fifth day, worn to shreds through the fingertips and palms. Four huts still remain untouched. With every parcel of shabby personal effects that she ferries to the ship, her disheartenment grows. Charred, crumbling books whose text is smudged and barely legible; datapads with cracked screens and long-dead power-cells; rusty cups and utensils. By force of habit – a lifetime of scavenging anything of potential value – she collects them all.

 

No lightsabers, no components. No crystals.

 

The throb of her gums and teeth eases a little with each passing day. Perhaps she is becoming desensitized to the planet’s strange electromagnetic charge; she could not imagine anyone enduring years of tuition here otherwise.

 

Something about this place compels her to train. At sunset, she practices alone with her new saberstaff – still confounded by the incredible revelation that she and Ben can pass objects through their bond, still half-expecting it to vanish in her grasp at any moment. Her skills with the quarterstaff translate seamlessly to his training weapon, but a double-bladed lightsaber holds infinitely more possibilities. Imagining herself fighting as a padawan, Rey drills the velocities, whipping the blades over her shoulders and across her waist, creating wheels of scarlet light in the dusk. Tentatively at first, then faster, with increasing fluidity as her confidence grows.

 

In her mind, she replays Ben’s techniques as they sparred aboard his flagship – so finessed, so disciplined and self-assured. He’d been… breathtaking. And endlessly patient with her. His offered instructions to correct her form had been firm and clear, moulding her reckless, primal style into something more calculated, closer to his own. She had accepted his guidance unquestioningly, paying little heed to his motives in doing so.

 

_You need a teacher._

 

In a single, swift movement, Rey winds the saberstaff around her upper arm, slices it wide through the empty air before her and twirls it behind her back, tucking the hilt securely beneath her opposite arm. She’s improving. Each time, she executes the skill faster and more precisely, until all she perceives is a crimson blur.

 

Ben had demonstrated a great deal for her: there were zones of attack and saber forms and katas – all referenced in the Sacred Texts. Skills he implied he would be willing to teach, should she return to him. Rey had restrained herself, not wanting to showcase her repertoire in case she ever needed to duel with him for real, sensing that Ben, too, was holding back.

 

_Next time, I will not go so easy on you._

 

Of course – he had anticipated a _next time_. Had he been sizing her up? Does he still consider her an enemy? Their fight against the Praetorian Guard is vivid in her memory. It had been harmony amongst chaos, each complementing the other’s strengths and compensating for their weaknesses. She could feel his animalistic excitement, spurring her on as she swung her blade, outmatched - but somehow, still victorious.

 

Does he think of her, as she does of him?

 

No – she won’t let him in, no matter how lonely she feels. He cannot know she is here, scrounging through the belongings of his victims.

 

Every evening when the setting sun gives way to twilight, Rey builds a fire and patrols it vigilantly, scanning the settlement for signs of life while she gulps down gelatinous veg-meat and polystarch bread. She can not ignore her sense of being under constant surveillance. Perhaps the padawans’ ghosts, if they are watching, will acknowledge her as one of their own – an aspiring Jedi warrior.

 

Finally, with a full stomach and a sinking heart, she shimmies into her sleep-cocoon and watches the campfire recede into glowing embers. Trying not to think of the last time she ventured out alone to no avail, and to whom she turned for solace.

 

Tomorrow will be the day. She’ll find her kyber crystal. Tomorrow.

 

~

 

Five days have elapsed.

 

Five days of fruitless searching.

 

Rey bolts awake in pitch-darkness to the sound of footsteps scuttling through the dried leaves, much too fast and erratic to be human. Like the colony of skittermice that invaded her AT-AT, scampering about its hull while she slept… but these are too heavy for a rodent’s, the crunching of leaves underfoot suggestive of a much larger being. The noise zigzags from right to left with no rhythm, steadily approaching.

 

Without a sound, Rey frees her arms from the cocoon, one hand closing over the saberstaff hilt, the other over the butt of her blaster.

 

As she slowly rolls to face the entrance to her tiny dwelling, a shadow blocks out the glowing embers from the fireplace.

 

All at once, she can sense its proximity, hear the mechanical grating of its excited respiration… smell its fetid breath.

 

She silently raises the NN-14 barrel, her opposite thumb seeking out the activator switch on the saberstaff hilt.

 

“ _Koh-to-yah, tressspasssser,_ ” it hisses, the distorted voice inches from her face.

 

Rey shoots first, then ignites the saberstaff. Her campsite is illuminated in dull scarlet light.

 

There is nothing there.

 

Kicking away her sleep-cocoon, she scrambles to her feet, her pulse thundering in her ears. There will be no more sleep tonight.

 

~

 

By sunrise, she is determined to finish this as quickly as possible and leave. Now. Today. Coming here and interfering with this place has awakened some dormant evil force, one that is no longer afraid to manifest itself. If the colony exudes an aura of hostility, the temple ruins are its nexus of evil.

 

With welding gloves damaged beyond repair and stiff, swollen fingers, she silently implores the spirits to pardon her disrespect and overturns the wreckage of the four remaining huts with the Force. Lifting rocks. It takes maybe one-tenth of the time she’d needed to do it manually.

 

Shattered clay pots. A rudimentary sewing kit. More singed clothing. Shards of charric and shalui that were probably implements in a previous life, now damaged beyond recognition.

 

No weapons.

 

No kyber crystals.

 

Swallowing down a rising sense of desperation, Rey turns her attention to the tombstones protruding from the hillside like a row of jagged teeth. Days of self-doubt are derailing her sense of reason. Surely the students would have been laid to rest with their weapons?

 

The soft mounds of elevated turf scream the loudest here of sorrow and loss. She wrestles with her instinct and thoughts of propriety; the dead have no need for possessions, she repeats, drawing hesitantly closer. Master Skywalker’s presence is heaviest here, an imprint of his soul lingering in a moment of anguish, burying these young padawans who trusted him to protect them. His legacy is one of ruination and failure.

 

An overwhelming guilt that what she is about to do is unforgivable and blatantly sacrilegious plagues her conscience. She examines each headstone, unable to commit to the thought of plundering their graves, although the harsh stroke of practicality assures her that this may be her greatest chance.

 

It’s too much.

 

_**TCHOCK-MELOR OF CEREA** _

_**HE IS WITH THE FORCE** _

 

She can’t. Not yet. She might have been one of them, if not for the cruel hand of fate. Unless the only alternative is returning to the Resistance empty-handed, she cannot bring herself to go through with it.

 

The temple, however…

 

Her heart stutters as she raises a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, peering up at its blackened carcass. Its perimeter is oddly bereft of the thick scrub overgrown across the remainder of the colony, its decrepitude free of the dried leaves carpeting the forest floor and strewn across every other pile of wreckage, despite the ak-trees whose shadowy arms stretch across the ruins. The little that is left of the building stands in spite of itself, defying gravity in its precarious way. Its columns are the only complete thing; everything else has worn and crumbled, their decay the only marker of time in a place of uncounted days.

 

Within minutes, Rey has circled the ruins. No conventional means of entry remain intact, but the tilt of one beam allows a small crawl space that appears to lead into an unlit, central chasm. The grey columns themselves are charred and cracked, echoes of the pyre that devastated the sacred praxeum a lifetime ago. Approaching the structure, she runs her palm reverently over the finished masonry – sigils carved into the stone, which she will never understand.

 

A stench floods out from the hole beneath it, the smell of something… or someone… decaying.

 

Fighting the urge to dry retch, Rey bows her head and wiggles nimbly through the crawl space. Once inside, her hands move to the strapping on her saberstaff, unslinging it from her shoulder and igniting it like a glowlamp in the darkness. The plasma blades cast a soft red hue over the interior of the temple.

 

The vile odour of decomposition and rot clogs her nose immediately. Beyond the temple’s menacing exterior, its innards are equally destroyed, if not worse off. Long ago, the floor must have been a polished marble – even now, there are patches that show through the encroaching mud and dust. The fallen stone beams and rubble have created an artificial cave of sorts, with a dim passageway at one end. It houses nothing but a central raised pulpit upon which a large, heavy-looking tome rests, open near the middle page.

 

Rey creeps through the battered skeleton of the dead building with awe, passing her luminescent weapon over inscriptions she cannot decipher in the fallen beams. Nor can she read the single remaining text – its scripture is in an alien language, not Galactic Basic – although she notes with unease that both its open pages and the top surface of the wooden pulpit are free of the thick layer of dust blanketing everything else.

 

“ _Ssssinner.”_ A metallic voice echoes through the cavernous space – not Ben’s, but the chilling hiss from her nightmares.

 

Rey turns slowly, clutching her saberstaff like a drowning man clings to a straw. By its faint glow, she can barely make out a massive, hefty figure emerging from the shadows at the far passage of the temple, concealed in an ink-black cloak. It paces toward her languidly, deliberately.

 

_Clump._

 

“Exxxxhume the bodiesss of my brotherssss…” it croaks. “Your ssselfish thoughtssss betray you.”

 

_Clump._

 

The creature raises a hand towards her, four thick, leathery fingers held aloft. For an instant, Rey is terrified she will feel her body betraying her – being dragged toward it against her will, or that she will be flung through the air as Snoke had done to her. And… its _face._ Its barely visible features are unlike anything she has ever laid eyes upon – hideously misshapen, with grossly oversized goggles set over invisible eyes, its mouth and chin hidden beneath an ornately decorated mask of black and silver.

 

Her boots begin to slide forward towards the creature of their own accord, scraping across the muddied marble floor. Gritting her teeth and impelling her limbs to stop trembling, Rey calls upon all the strength she can muster and opposes the movement.

 

It stops. After a moment, so does the mystical pull. She hastily retreats a step, putting distance between her and the beast.

 

“Forgive me, sir,” she offers, her voice infinitely more commanding than she feels. “I meant no intrusion.”

 

Something brushes along her limbs, circling her head, like a gentle breeze. As she had done with the ruins earlier – searching for a way in. Rey shivers, willing it away and barricading her thoughts.

 

“ _Thief.”_ She judders again – while she can plainly see the dark figure slowly advancing upon her, the metallic whisper seemed be flush against her ear. A sense of urgency bites at her heels and her eyes seek out the crawlspace, her sole passageway to freedom.

 

But she is here for a reason, and refuses to return to the Resistance a failure. Rey squares her shoulders and stands her ground.

 

“This temple has no master,” she declares firmly. “It belongs to no one.”

 

The creature advances another step, his facial features clarifying in the light of her saberstaff. Thick clusters of flesh on either side of his head and leathery, corrugated skin, the golden-rose colour of the setting sun. The chrome-plated black mask concealing his face reminds her of Kylo Ren’s, but with twin tusk-like appendages protruding beyond his chin.

 

“That isss what you ssssay. That isss… what you feel,” it replies evenly. As it plods steadily closer, Rey becomes aware of muffled voices within her mind – a low-pitched wail, that childlike tittering from before, and rambling soliloquies in many languages, many discordant tones, all simultaneously. The nearer he draws, the louder the mental cacophony.

 

_Clump._

 

“I am Rey! I meant no intrusi -” Yelling to try and drown out the raucousness in her mind, she finds herself cut off. The creature’s hand has risen toward her face again and in so doing, she sees the hilt of a lightsaber hanging on its belt.

 

Its opposite arm crosses its torso, thick gloved fingers reaching for the saber.

 

“I care _not_ , tressspasssser.”

 

Retreating another pace, her eyes dart about her. The beast is now obscuring her only exit; she will need to negotiate, or somehow evade it in the shadows.

 

“I need your help, sir,” she entreats again. “I have -”

 

She hears the clip of its belt. The hilt is free now, its hand clenched around it.

 

“You will find no help here, intruder,” it grates, and more of the chattering voices take up the howling between her ears. “Only your death.”

 

Extending her arm, Rey presents the training saber like a shield, as though it might provide any protection against a genuine weapon. “Please, I -”

 

“ _Quiet, girl!”_ it yowls back, only this time, with Plutt’s voice.

 

He’s found a way in. The instant she realises this, the childish cackling intensifies.

 

The terrifying snap of his lightsaber igniting fills the broken room. The beam is an intense scarlet, burning like a controlled flame – but unlike Kylo Ren’s, this one is stable. Panic flares through her veins, white-hot and unforgiving, scorching her senses. She must not allow him to back her into a corner. How does a training saber fare, pitted against an actual weapon?

 

“Where did you get that blade?” she shouts, twirling her own deftly about her right hand, hoping to mislead him with its authenticity. Sidestepping along the crumbled wall, she struggles to free the NN-14 from her belt with the left.

 

“I _created_ it, child. Jussst like thisss temple created me.” He swings the saber in a languorous arc – a movement well-practised and perfectly executed, more a demonstration of his expertise than an attack. She senses that he does not anticipate a threat. “And yoursss?”

 

“I… I’m a Jedi,” Rey stammers, scaling the perimeter, trying to circle her foe.

 

The choir of voices stops chattering and joins the child’s giggling simultaneously.

 

“Of _coursssse_ ,” he mocks.

 

While the beast is talking, he isn’t attacking. “ _You’re_ a Jedi?” she adds uncertainly, eyeing his beam - the weapon of one who has surrendered themselves to the darkness.

 

“Until I wassss not.” His nonsensical words reverberate inside her head, one gravelly voice rising amongst many. All at once, Rey understands two things: the creature is somehow projecting his thoughts, and he is insane. His muddled perception of her flutters around his head like a buzzing gnat. “I wasss Pla Nel. A Jedi… then... Pla Ren, a Knight. Then… I wassss not.” He cocks his head contemplatively to one side, the meaty tendrils of flesh at his cheeks quivering with the sudden movement. “Ssstay, girl,” he whispers, “It keepssss you.”

 

Another two steps toward her, so quickly this time that she perceives little more than a blur.

 

“Don’t come any closer,” Rey warns shakily, aiming the blaster barrel at his cranium.

 

He pays her no heed, padding steadily nearer as she backs along the wall in a dangerous dance. His nauseating stench is alien to her and sets her on edge.

 

“I can ssssmell your fear, child,” the Knight wheezes, switching the saber to his left hand, stretching out his right to Force-push her.

 

She fires. Again and again.

 

Almost as if it were a game, the beast deflects every shot with his fiery blade, wincing each time the plasma bolts strike fallen stone, the impact causing the already hazardous structure to crumble further. Every time her foe cringes, the voices within squeal in unison.

 

“ _Sssstop, wretch!_ ” he screeches, and she recoils, scrunching her eyes shut against the sudden clangor in her head.

 

Pla Ren flings his free arm sideways in a single, powerful gesture. The blaster goes flying out of her hand.

 

He rushes forward, lunges, strikes at her skull. Dropping to her haunches, Rey slips under the arc of his blade, somersaulting across the dirty marble, leaping to her feet behind him.

 

The Knight pivots, slashing wide as he spins. His quick reflexes catch Rey off guard. The bright blade is blinding as it swipes at her face. She arches backwards, too late - the tip of his beam connects, tearing searing white-hot agony into her forehead.

 

Rendered temporarily blind by the intensity of the light, Rey raises her training saber between them, backpedalling until her shoulders hit solid stone.

 

“I know that ssssaber,” he croons, the mask amplifying his voice. “My brother’ssss…”

 

“I don’t know your brother,” Rey protests, shuffling away from the advancing vermilion beam as she feels her way along the wall.

 

“Thief!” his distorted voice spits inches from her cheek, even as her eyes readjust, watching his shadow approach in front of her. The chaotic wails between her ears echo his cry, over and over.

 

“I don’t know -”

 

The creature lets out an unnerving, robotic roar – and charges once again.

 

Driving her back foot into the wall, Rey launches herself at him and clashes the hilt of her saber into his as hard as she can, thrusting with the Force. For a second, their weapons lock and she senses his uncertainty.

 

Retracting his lightsaber, the creature retreats a step then immediately lunges, slashing wildly. She casts herself to the floor once again, tumbling against the stonework, regaining her footing and skipping back out of his reach as he swings, again and again. His first and second strikes miss badly. The third – a backswing off the one before it – finds flesh again. His blade eats through Rey’s tunic at the midsection as easily as air. Agony lances through her abdomen.

 

She must try.

 

Gritting her teeth against the sharp bite at her stomach, Rey leaps at the Knight with her blade upheld, swiping at his saber in a vicious foreswing and following with a backswing. The creature barely dodges the first and meets the second with his beam.

 

His red blade sails straight through hers, like a shaft of light.

 

Raucous laughter instantly erupts within Rey’s mind again, the multitude of voices so clamorous that her skull threatens to burst.

 

She follows the momentum of her swing with a forward roll, narrowly missing Pla Ren’s riposte. When she springs to her feet – he is already there. As if comprehending now that her weapon is a sham, he punches the hilt of his lightsaber into hers. The sheer power of the blow sends Rey’s twin blades back, back, back… but not enough to knock the saberstaff free from her hands.

 

Crowding her against the far wall, the Knight aims another arcing shot at Rey’s chest, burning through the wraps at her left shoulder, missing the flesh behind it by mere centimetres. Unfazed, he strikes again at her throat. The spryness of her dodge catches him unaware. Dropping to her heels underneath his swing, Rey grasps at his right boot with her left hand, driving her full weight into his knee.

 

Pla Ren screams – once, when his plasma beam sails through the fallen pillar bringing forth an eruption of dust and charred rocks, and again as she topples him, a grotesque meaty _thud_ as his misshapen head strikes marble. By the weak light of her saberstaff, Rey sees ghastly eyes beneath his dislodged goggles - ink-black multifaceted slits, like a bahl-fly’s.

 

Raising her own free hand, she harnesses the Force and _pushes_ with all her might, propelling his recumbent body into the loose rocks at the far wall.

 

With a dull _whumph_ , the entire structure quakes from the impact, loose sand and stones raining onto the marble floor. The rubble collapses where the Knight struck, burying the crawl space and plunging them both into complete darkness, save for the scarlet light of Rey’s weapon.

 

She is trapped.

 

As she watches in horror, Pla Ren rises to his feet, flinging aside the goggles and calling his fallen lightsaber to his hand. He reignites it with a flourish.

 

The torturous voices are deafening now, shrieking and sniggering as Rey scours the cavern for another exit… her blaster… _anything_. Her breath comes in shallow gasps, heart hammering in her chest, panic building like a rolling sea inside her abdomen.

 

She had promised Leia… but this isn’t worth dying for.

 

“I will leave!” she pleads frantically, watching him raise his snarling blade once more, taking aim. “Please, just let me go!”

 

The cursed creature chortles again. “You can never leave this placccce. Not truly!” he bays, and rushes at her.

 

Nimble-footed as a vworkka, Rey leaps onto a listing stone column, shimmying up its length. The beast’s blade can not reach her – so he hacks through the beam.

 

The act pains him. Rey senses it. An affront to the temple is an affront to him. He believes that he is one with the Force here, among these ruins… he can feel his lost brothers and sisters clinging to the splinters in every twisted limb of this collapsing structure. They summoned him across the vastness of space, tempting him from his duties. There is no other calling. Only this sacred place.

 

The beam shudders and collapses. She crashes to the ground along with it, narrowly missing the slash of the Knight’s saber as she tumbles across the floor. His blade scores the marble instead, leaving a charred streak, and he lets out a beastly roar as if it was he who had been struck.

 

In a final, futile show of defiance, Rey calls the saberstaff back into her outstretched palm. Its twin beams blaze to life once again and she swings wildly, struggling to internalise her training.

 

Pla Ren strikes.

 

His blade connects with the hilt of her weapon, shattering it in a brilliant shower of white sparks that singes her clasped hand. The pieces clatter to the floor. He is not finished. Another swipe slices into her shin. Rey screams through a red haze of pain, the foul scents of singed fabric and burned flesh mingling in the stale air.

 

This is how she will die. Alongside the fallen padawans of Skywalker’s praxeum. The price she will pay for her foolish, reckless quest for a Jedi weapon.

 

She could destroy the remains of the temple - raze it to the ground with the Force. It’s the only thing that seems to hurt him. But such a reckless act might bury them both… it could be suicide.

 

She must escape. At any cost.

 

Rey closes her eyes, trying to sense her combatant’s position, anticipate his increasingly erratic strikes. The harsh scrape of fabric and limbs dragging across the floor and the grating sounds of his laboured breathing assault her ears as he lumbers closer. All she can see is the red astral thread, sparking like a livewire, thrumming rapidly with her own heartbeat.

 

Her last hope. Her _only_ hope.

 

“...Ben?” His name escapes her lips in a panicked whimper. This dark Jedi is under his jurisdiction and there is no time to consider where his loyalties might lie.

 

Behind her clenched eyelids, the scarlet glow is abruptly replaced by complete darkness. The beast has extinguished his saber. A metallic rattle echoes from the stone walls – he must have tossed it aside.

 

“Ben...” she whispers again, frantic now to reopen the connection. Her thoughts accelerate along with hundreds of chattering voices, a carousel of fears spinning out of control. She needs help. Damn the consequences. Her ribs heave as if bound by ropes, straining to inflate her lungs.

 

An invisible hand claps over her mouth, then a second at the nape of her neck.

 

“Ben!” her shriek is muffled by the leather of Pla Ren’s glove, but her pleas do not go unnoticed. The blood-curdling voices in her head take up the chant, reciting his name in unison.

 

The Knight lifts her from the floor by her neck as though she were weightless. He is impossibly strong. Rey struggles in vain, screaming like a trapped animal, thrashing and flailing as her fingers claw at the fabric of his arms.

 

She tries to Force-blast him away. The gesture is pointless. He grunts disconcertedly and they rock backward together before he regains his footing, thick fingers encircling her neck to throttle her, suspending her much smaller frame above the ground.

 

“Let me go!” she chokes into his glove, gasping for air as his hands tighten around her throat.

 

“I cannot!” the garbled voice rasps, entirely too close to her ear. Lashing out, her fingernails dig into fibrous, cobbled flesh… and the regular outline of something solid. It’s too little, too late. Her perception is wavering, sounds fading in and out like a broken hololog on outdated tech. “You can never leave! You can never leave! It keepss you! _It keepsss you!_ ”

 

 _Ben, please_ , Rey begs into the void again, hot tears stinging at her eyelids.

 

_\- tear off his crinking breath mask -_

 

 _Ben?_ The words are clear and focused, but she cannot sense him anywhere through the bond.

 

“ _It keepsss you!”_

 

The mask! This time, Rey reaches for the regular carved surface with both the Force and her trembling hands. She pushes her fingers into the gristly skin of his cheeks and anchors them against the edges of his respirator. Pla Ren slams her back into the ground, still gabbling senselessly.

 

“My brothersss are lonely, child! Lonely! _Like you!_ Sssstay with us! _Ssstay!_ ” he rambles on and on, right up until she rips his breath mask free.

 

Rey’s neck is immediately released and she doubles over coughing, clutching at her throat, dragging in precious lungfuls of air. Scrabbling away from the creature’s wheezing, still-muttering form on her hands and knees, her fingers bump into a familiar cylindrical object. For one horrifying second, a hand grabs at one of her ankles. She hastily kicks it away - hearing another muted grunt behind her as her boot connects with something solid.

 

Her hand closes over the cylinder, recognising its shape and familiar weight, similar to the Skywalker saber. Thumbing the activator, she ignites the Knight’s beam, bathing them both in crimson light. His breathing is harsh now and he is rapidly weakening; he staggers toward her, drops to one knee, tries to stand, drops again clumsily. The sight of her adversary’s naked face makes her recoil; a gaping maw, quivering facial appendages, variegated, sallow skin like scarred nerf-leather.

 

_Stay, child! It keeps you! You can never leave!_

 

The cacophonous choir of Pla Ren’s lunacy thundering between her ears is suddenly drowned out by another voice, calm and measured.

 

_Finish him._

 

It’s the pull of the darkness. The same power that compelled her to kill Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base as he rocked in the snow, mortally wounded, deserving nothing but a fiery death by her hand. This vile creature is a Knight of Ren, a servant of the First Order, murderer of countless innocents. Including her, if not for Ben’s mercy just now. She should end him. It is her obligation.

 

Pla Ren lies prostrated beside her, whooping helplessly, his thick limbs flailing at the mud-caked marble.

 

Rey resists. She will not succumb to fear, anger or hatred… all paths to the dark side. Turning her back on the dying figure, she raises a hand instead to the pile of rubble blocking her entryway. The fallen boulders tremor briefly then fly apart, unveiling her passage to her freedom. Sunlight dimly illuminates the cavern.

 

She summons her blaster – it strikes her waiting palm. The training saber has exploded into fragments. Unsalvageable. Extinguishing and belting Pla Ren’s lightsaber, Rey crawls toward the sunlight, leaving the suffocating abomination to perish in her wake.

 

The dead have no need for possessions.

 

~

 

The moment Rey re-boards her shuttle, she knows she cannot leave.

 

She has what she came for, but _this_ – thirteen bundles of scavenged belongings, diligently assembled with little purpose other than to justify her presence here – is nothing but flagrant disrespect. An unwelcome pang of guilt eats at her insides. She feels like a petty thief. Pillaged their decrepit settlement, slaughtered their brother… purloined his weapon. How far would she have gone, had temple held nothing for her? Desecrated their resting places with the Force?

 

The creature accused her of dishonoring the memories of padawans past. She does not want to prove him right.

 

The burden of guilt is too much to bear. She gathers up two swags and trudges back down the boarding ramp, heading for the graveyard.

 

~

 

Tython’s sun is at its peak by the time Rey finishes lining up the dead students’ belongings in front of their tombstones. With no idea whose belong to whom, she crouches before them on the hillside and reads aloud each name carved into the flat surfaces of stone. The wounds that the creature blazed into her flesh burn with every small movement.

 

She is certain now that Pla Ren is dead. A quiet emptiness has taken the place of the suffocating aura of rancour and lunacy that plagued her these past few days. Faint birdsong and the chirruping of crickets warbles from the distant ak-trees; sounds she was unaware of before, if they were even there.

 

Rey kneels humbly in the scrub beside the graves. She feels as though she ought to acknowledge this moment, offer her apologies or blessings or prayers or… something. But she has never been religious, and no words seem weighty enough to commemorate these young people who, in an alternative reality, could have been her own brothers and sisters in training. Only one passage from the Rammahgon comes to mind; she bows her head and begins to whisper.

 

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

_There is no ignorance, there is knowledge._

_There is no passion, there is serenity._

_There is no chaos, there is harmony._

_There is no death._

_There is the Force._

 

By the final line, she is weeping softly. Burying her face in her hands, Rey allows herself a moment to grieve for the five aspiring warriors who entrusted Skywalker with their lives, for her one-time, would-be Jedi Master whose selfless sacrifice spared the Resistance, and for Ben… Luke’s most promising pupil, now hopelessly, irrevocably lost.

 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles again through her tears. Glancing back at the temple wreckage, she wonders whether she is truly any better than Ben Solo, leaving the deranged Knight’s corpse to rot within the tomb he so fervently worshipped. “I’m sorry, Pla Ren.”

 

~

 

Once the ship is free of Tython’s atmosphere, Rey programs the navicomputer for the halfway mark - one stop to refuel – and trudges to the tiny ‘fresher compartment. It contains nothing but a lavatory, a basin and a small mirror. Stripping down to her underwear, she inspects her newest battle wounds: cauterised gashes from Pla Ren’s blade across her face and body – all will certainly scar. Not that she cares.

 

She fills the basin with recycled water and sponges herself down with a frayed washcloth, gingerly cleansing her wounds, cringing as she wipes away clinging dirt and blood. Her throat feels puffy and constricted; swallowing is now a painful challenge. The flesh there is grossly swollen and marked with angry red welts, the width of the creature’s fingers.

 

Five standard days to the Outer Rim. Five more to Seregar.

 

Not bothering to redress in her bloodstained rags for the time being, Rey returns to the cockpit, watching a myriad of stars coalesce into a blur through the viewport and searching for Leia’s dice.

 

In her quiet solitude now, she finds that she cannot keep Ben from her thoughts, mulling over how different everything might have been if the fates had smiled on her and she’d trained alongside him as a padawan. Rather than to have faced each other as adversaries on Starkiller Base, then fought as allies, and now… whatever they are. She will never forget that night on Ahch-To - after the mirror cave - when he listened to her without judgement, his gentle reassurance that she was not alone. Nor any moment they have shared. She had been too hasty to flee him on the Star Destroyer, she considers, when he probed her mind - solely out of curiosity this time. A scientific experiment, testing what was possible through their bond, as with everything else they had done.

 

It had to have been Ben. He had somehow guided her to the creature’s mask, his Achilles heel.

 

Looping the gold chain between her fingers, she reclines in the pilot’s seat and closes her eyes.

 

~

 

Rey awakens to the burbling sound of running water, moisture beading on her cheeks. _Frack_ , the ‘fresher tap – she must have left it on. Begrudgingly, she rises from the chair, her aching limbs protesting the movement.

 

Steam has clouded the interior of the cockpit, although with a disconcerting certainty, she senses she has been transported elsewhere. The ship’s hull is suddenly at least twice as spacious and plated with black tiles. Disorientated, she turns and lifts her gaze, her lips falling open as she comprehends where she is.

 

And who she is inadvertently staring at.

 

Ben is naked with his back to her, leaning against the tiles under a steaming cascade.

 

Perhaps it is fatigue, or the knock to her head; last time she’d averted her gaze and insisted that he cover himself, but now, she stares unabashedly at the rivulets of water running down the strong, lean lines of his body. Her wide eyes are drawn to the scars marking his torso as stars mark the night sky. His right shoulder blade bears three moles in an inverted pyramid shape, like the Horns of Waryl constellation. Rey has seen unclothed men before at the outpost, scrawny-limbed and potbellied, haggling for robes or relieving themselves shamelessly behind traders’ tents, but nothing like this.

 

Maybe she can escape before he realises -

 

“You’re late,” he growls softly.

 

Her breath catches. She ought to say something, just to fill the silence - apologize for her intrusion or thank him for his help - but her jaw works uselessly. She is not afraid this time, but… He is exquisite in ways that she was not aware could exist. Thick ropes of muscle adorn his broad back and she sees the striations of his shoulders as he flattens his large hands against the walls. Years of battle and relentless training have sculpted his huge body to perfection. There isn’t an unnecessary ounce of flesh on him.

 

 _Mine_ _,_ she thinks, the impulse gone in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

 

What if she just... took a few steps forward? Would the searing-hot water burn her skin, like it is reddening his? Could she feel the contours of his back beneath her fingertips… and what would he do to her, if she touched him now?

 

Heat rises to her cheeks at the thought and she feels a strange stirring, low below her gut. It is not painful – quite the opposite. Ben’s breathing has quickened. His knuckles whiten as he drives his palms into the tiles, still facing away from her.

 

Turning back to the control panel, Rey glares at the steering yoke, willing the red thread to break. She is afraid of what might happen if she stays.

 

Another second, and the shuttle is back in silence, its recycled air dry and stagnant. Tarnished durasteel where, moments ago, there were gleaming black tiles.

 

~

 

Hours later, on the cusp of much-needed sleep, Rey remembers seeing that constellation of moles before.

 

In her dreams.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Kel Dor translation:**  
>  _Koh-to-yah_ = Greetings


	9. ...dxc4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's killing the Knights, the cowardly shit.

 

 

He’s killing the Knights, the cowardly shit.

  


A solitary warrior, unrecognisable as alien or human underneath full plate armour, paces the perimeter of the Shrine of Kooroo. With every rustle of the forest canopy leaves in the warm summer breeze,

  


_shavit, it’s kriffing_ him

  


every whisper bird and bogwing that soars lazily through the auburn sky overhead

  


_his shuttle! He’s karking found me_

  


she clutches her saber pike handle a little tighter. She definitely does _not_ scour the tree-trunks for any sign of movement through the visor of her silver songsteel helmet, startling at shadows shifting in the dying afternoon sunlight.

  


She won’t be next.

  


She has taken control of her destiny. Here, she can lay low – she’s been overlooked her whole life; why not use it to her advantage now?

  


Al-Jinn sensed Koya’s and Thalaam’s deaths as ripples in the Force, dissipating from a single point like water droplets in a pond. Powerful Force-signatures, so ingloriously snuffed out. Koya had obviously put up a decent fight. He’d wanted what she wants – absolute power. Supreme leadership. He would have been formidable competition, too, had Kylo Ren not saved her the trouble. The egocentric turd’s clothes were slashed to rags when he tried to flaunt his so-called sovereignty by heaving his underling’s severed head at a cam-droid, making an example of the mettlesome Knight for all those who conspired to betray him. Ha! _Dares to challenge my supremacy_ , indeed!

  


He had been a good leader to the Knights, once. Now, he defends some unavailing role as a vacuous figurehead of the First Order, in which he stands idly by while Armitage Hux commands his army and singlehandedly presides over the galaxy. Or he kills at Hux’s bidding, like a hired mercenary. She imagines Kylo Ren lounging in Master Snoke’s repulsively misproportioned obsidian throne in a state of melancholic indifference, probably wallowing in self-pity now that his mentor is dead.

  


Even if it was by his hand.

  


A branch snaps in the distant forest and her stomach lurches. She would have sensed his approach… wouldn’t she? The Navigators would surely have warned her. Al-Jinn holds her breath, keeping perfectly still to silence her clanking armour, her ears straining for any sounds. Telltale footsteps. The fiery snap of a lightsaber.

  


Oh yes, she’s well aware of his brainless ruse about the Jakkuvian grub-weasel slaughtering Snoke and the Elite Praetorian Guard. She can barely believe his nerfdruk deceived even Hux. That little Force-enthused neophyte? Master Snoke could have snapped her spine like a twig, had he not wagered his apprentice’s loyalty to him against some arbitrary Force-bond.

  


And lost.

  


The woods remain silent, and after one heart-stopping moment, Al-Jinn continues on. It’s the fracking bears again. A clan of garu-bears have taken up residence in the trees by the shrine and keep lumbering out to investigate when she patrols at sundown. She mistakes them every time in the failing light for Kylo karking Ren. One day soon, she will lose patience with them and crush their little windpipes with the Force. Teach _them_ to put the fear of the gods into her.

  


The Navigators are no fools. They were aboard an escape-pod miles from the doomed Supremacy before the last guard’s carcass was hurled into the exhaust fan. Ren’s and the street-rat’s arrival portended the beginning of the chain of calamitous events that they had foreseen. Their warnings to Snoke had gone unheeded. His delusions of grandeur were his downfall, as with so many of his Sith forefathers.

  


But his violet-cloaked, skeletal confidantes conveyed their insights to Al-Jinn when they arrived at the training post over which she presided at the time, projecting mental images of their master’s butchered corpse lolling on the polished throne room floor – flaming scarlet curtains raining through the air – a Mega Star Destroyer sheared in two with surgical precision, as if by a blade.

  


All things General Hux has verified in her terse communications with him since. Hux, however, remains unaware of the true identity of the Supreme Leader’s executioner.

  


Truthfully, she doesn’t miss that daily condescending, disdainful greeting when his hologram appeared every morning on XV-344H. Another day of Hux’s programming; another day of his scripted training regimen, to dissuade their latest child-recruits of their humanity and groom them for battle.

  


One more slow, vigilant lap of the temple. Its boundaries are marked with obelisks of carved stone, narrow-based structures that dwarf the central dome of the shrine. Their shadows elongate in the sunset. She sees the dark lord in every single one. Their significance remains a mystery; Al-Jinn knows little of the ancient worshippers who constructed this enigmatic place in which she now seeks sanctuary.

  


Thalaam Ren was a pacifist. A soft target. He maintained that democracy was the optimal path for galactic rulership, rather than war. Destroying the Hosnian System was brutal and unnecessary, he had argued, believing the New Republic Senate could be persuaded to the First Order’s political views over years of summits and negotiations and political claptrap. Pointless carnage, he called it, despite the hundreds of planetary governments who had suddenly yielded to First Order rule after witnessing the cataclysm. A few billion lives were pittance, weighed against the subjugation of every last planetary system. Thalaam had no roots, no personal ties to the Hosnian System, either. He always advocated so vehemently for their subjects’ basic human rights too, even while overseeing the slave-driven Star Forge within his own Sector.

  


Skrogging hypocrite. She hopes he kriffing perished with them all.

  


That leaves her, the twins and that insufferable Kel Dor in the Core Worlds. That lunatic’s attempts to practice Sith magic are going to drive him mad. She would just as soon tear off his crinking breath mask herself and watch him suffocate in the oxygen-rich Coruscant atmosphere, if Kylo doesn’t get there first.

  


She has fantasised about killing Pla Ren in combat. For some unknown reason, they are in the dark in this particular daydream… and she is unarmed, carrying only a glowrod of some sort… but her prior knowledge of his vulnerability renders her no less lethal.

  


Al-Jinn ignites her lightsaber pike, lighting her path as she patrols through the dusk. The shrine is eerily quiet without the parade-cries and synchronous cadence of marching and cacophony of blaster-fire to which she was so well-accustomed on XV-344H. She makes her way to the earthen steps, half-listening for that mechanical breathing, scanning her surrounds for the inverted cross of his weapon, cursing the conspicuous metallic _clunk_ of her sabatons with each footfall.

  


Not that she’s afraid. Not exactly. She may not match Kylo Ren’s finesse with bladework – nor his expertise wielding the dark Force – but she still has the Navigators, her oracles, and she’s safe here on Haffrin. The Shrine of Kooroo has been instrumental in developing her Force abilities. Its sanctuary chamber has an echo effect, amplifying her senses and granting her visions from light years away.

  


If she meditates here, as she does most nights, she can visualise all of the Force-users scattered across the galaxy like a unique undulating constellation of stars. With every Force-sensitive child the First Order army slaughters, their light vanishes, like a candle winking out in the wind. Every evening, there are fewer and fewer little stars.

  


The alien Navigators have no spoken language but communicate in pictures, sharing with her their strange precognitions. Unlike Master Snoke, Al-Jinn _listens_. She often ponders why the Navigators chose her over the other Knights of Ren. Undoubtedly, they expect she will outlast the others.

  


Snoke – and Ren – and even fracking _Skywalker_ – dismissed her as the weakest of the pack.

  


The galaxy’s next Supreme Leader will be a woman. She will buck tradition.

  


Their mercurial leader will inevitably destroy all the other Knights and then himself, and when the time comes, Al-Jinn Ren will be ready. Supreme Leader by default. She will seize Master Snoke’s throne, have them build a battlefleet of superweapons, and blast whatever remains of this Makerforsaken galaxy to oblivion - this wretched hive of scum and villainy that the First Order has created. She did not lament when Snoke obliterated her home world of Courtsilius and her so-called kin, a family that disowned her and shuttled her off to Skywalker at the first sign that she was different. Attachment is weakness, Master Snoke always preached.

  


Through the darkness, she was reborn. The Force works through her all the more powerfully in her invisibility. Nothing else brings her comfort now but the cold embrace of solitude, and soon enough, there will _be_ nothing else.

  


She sinks to one knee before Darth Tenebrous’s effigy and begins to pray.

  


_Through power, I gain victory._

_Through victory, my chains are broken._

_The Force shall free me. Peace is a lie._

  


~

  


Kylo does not break stride to salute his subordinates as he storms through the passageways of the Harbinger, flanked by General Hux and Captain Peavey, both hurrying to keep pace.

  


They pass Lieutenant Stynnix, a survivor and former crew member of the Supremacy, who halts and rigidly salutes but avoids eye contact. Her dress uniform is immaculately pressed and clean, her black boots polished to a high shine. Kylo glances at her mask-like face, completely devoid of emotion. She is so young - barely a teenager - especially for one of such a high military ranking. As is the next officer to march past and salute, and the next. The tempo of their rhythmic gait slows almost unnoticeably as they approach the Supreme Leader; perhaps instinct compels them to flee, but is overridden by a lifetime of conditioning. First Order officers are recruited and trained for direct combat from early childhood, as soon as they are weaned and independently mobile.

  


_Look at their faces, sire._

  


Project Resurrection may have begun as a clandestine operation to conscript children for Stormtrooper training, but as the First Order rose to power, the conscription program became galactic law. It was initially met with resistance – entire villages culled and incinerated as groups of their bewildered children were ushered away to transport shuttles at gunpoint – but now slaves across the known worlds cannot give their progeny over soon enough to a life of servitude.

  


_Why do you think that is, my lord? What mother willingly surrenders the one she loves the most? Because they will_ live, _and live well._

  


There is no financial remuneration to the slaves. No favour earned with their oppressors for their sacrifice. No drinking-money.

  


Thanisson passes in a precise heel-toe march. A brief look of trepidation crosses his face as he eyes their guest, but he salutes stiffly nevertheless. Peavey mirrors his salute. The petty officer is a childlike replica of Hux, with a black uniform bearing the First Order insignia, meticulously arranged coppery hair and pallid complexion. Thanisson is another transfer from the Finalizer, demoted following FN-2187’s and Dameron’s escape as punishment from Phasma.

  


_It’s all the same, everywhere, Supreme Leader. Just like Bothawui. The galaxy is broken._

  


Kylo still chews over their conversation aboard the derelict Falcon. Damn Kopecz! He only knows the inside of the Sith Temple on a largely deserted volcanic planet. Who does he think he is to give counsel to the Supreme Leader?

  


_See for yourself. Go out among your people, sire. It will satiate your bloodlust, if nothing else._

  


General Hux is integral to recruit-training aboard the Finalizer, and more widely via holoprojection to land-based training regiments and those aboard the First Order's entire fleet of Star Destroyers. While the Cardinal and other veterans teach hand-to-hand and melee combat and marksmanship, Hux psychologically programs the cadets. Kylo wonders what kind of upbringing the General is providing them with. A recruit himself from birth, Hux extols the virtues of a harsh military environment to dull one’s developing sense of self and reinforce the groupthink.

  


Behind him, Hux and Peavey – the Finalizer’s captain and the man he usurped – exchange contemptuous glances. Kylo ignores the swirling strands of resentment and jealousy that pass between them in the Force, and marches on.

  


Both are integral to the machinations of the First Order – for now.

  


Neither will be irreplaceable.

  


~

  


The prisoners from Rakata Prime await interrogation in three adjacent holding cells, each harnessed to an angled platform and held upright by a complex restraining apparatus. As an added precaution, a Stormtrooper in each room presses a blaster-barrel to their temples. He remembers Rey this way as he enters the first cell, her stubbornness and unwelcome intrusion into his thoughts as he sifted through hers. The memory makes his blood boil.

  


Kylo approaches the platform with terrifying speed and slams his gloved palm into it, inches from the prisoner’s lolling head. The rebel vermin startles at the noise, tries to focus on the masked barbarian before him, glazed eyes rolling back into his skull. He stinks of stale sweat and excrement.

  


“ _Wake up, scum!_ ” Kylo’s caged voice barks.

  


The ‘trooper jabs the prisoner’s cheek with his blaster and his chin slumps forward onto his chest. His thoughts are a useless ocean of roiling, weaving colours, images with blurred edges.

  


The next cell has a similarly fetid odour, a second semi-conscious detainee. This one also sports a black eye swollen shut, bloodied lips and, from the set of his jaw, it has been broken. He tries to communicate, but his words are indecipherable. Kylo fights the urge to retch at his proximity.

  


He glances questioningly at Peavey.

  


“We have already interrogated the prisoners, my lord,” the captain advises, ever the consummate professional. “They were not forthcoming with information. Even with… persuasion.”

  


“Persuasion,” Kylo echoes flatly. Their _persuasion_ is  evident all over this man’s mutilated face.

  


“They have been kept awake for three standard days, awaiting your arrival, sir,” Peavey continues. “They were offered food and water in exchange for intel. All three refused.”

  


“Your instructions were to hold them for interrogation,” Kylo replies, applying a light Force-choke to Peavey’s saggy throat, just enough to bring him discomfort.

  


“Just read their minds with your Force-sorcery and they can be put out of their misery, Ren!” snarls Hux.

  


Still gripping Peavey, Kylo raises a splayed hand to the prisoner’s forehead, to no avail. His thoughts are swimming, garbled, incomprehensible and tinged with the chemical cloud of some unknown pharmaceutical.

  


He drags the captain, suspended by his throat, into the third cell. An unconscious, drooling Mon Calamari slumps against the platform, its piscine eyes half-open and glassy, the ‘trooper still uncertainly aiming a blaster at his shackled form.

  


Kylo _squeezes_ until Captain Peavey gags, fingers tearing at his collar, his face engorged and eyes bulging in terror.

  


“Ren,” General Hux warns sharply.

  


Kylo releases him.

  


Peavey crashes to his knees on the deck, gasping and spluttering.

  


“They are useless to me like this,” Kylo chastises, already wishing he'd squeezed harder, felt the portly captain's windpipe crushing in his grasp. “You will not glean the locations of the remaining Resistance bases through mindless torture.”

  


“My lord -” Peavey chokes out.

  


“Take them to the medicentre,” he interrupts. “They are to be given basic treatment, hydrated, and fed, when they are able. As soon as any are compos mentis again, bring them to me.”

  


“We will not suffer rebel scum to live!” Hux spits behind him.

  


Kylo whirls to face the General and steps uncomfortably close, towering over him, almost chest-to-chest. “Remember your place, General Hux,” he grinds out, gesturing toward Peavey, who is struggling to rise to his feet.

  


Hux curls his lip. “Supreme Leader,” he articulates darkly, snapping his heels together. No sooner has he stood at attention than his body is lifted and thrown into the doorway. It gives Kylo a small modicum of satisfaction to see his underling's adamantine composure rattled, if only for a moment.

  


The dark lord stalks away furiously, leaving his two sadistic subordinates in the cesspool of sweat and stink with their prisoner.

  


~

  


Through the Force, General Leia Organa Solo heard a very different story when Rey related the events that transpired aboard the Supremacy to their comrades-in-arms. Her self-appointed mission to free Ben Solo from the clutches of the dark side was impulsive and unwise, but the girl has always been driven by passion, and she has a kind soul. Ben finally mustered the courage to overthrow his Master, dispatched of the Praetorian guardsmen with her and seized rulership over the First Order for himself. Rey had been a timely distraction for Snoke, during which Ben could plot his execution. He used her as a means to his own ends. Or so she told her fellow soldiers, as the Falcon sped away from Crait.

  


Leia, however, listened with her heart.

  


_Join me. Please._

  


She sensed Rey’s tumult of emotions at her son’s entreaty, his offered hand. He’d valued her as someone worthy of ruling alongside, but there was more. Much more. Rey had been in tears at her sudden realisation that Ben Solo would not turn for her. For love.

  


Rey has said nothing of this, but her thoughts betray her.

  


Perhaps seeing for herself the ruins of Luke’s Jedi Temple on Tython, the graves of Ben’s victims, will finally convince her that he is truly lost. The `Jedi Killer’ – Leia’s own son – ended the Jedi Order as mercilessly as Darth Vader had extinguished it two generations ago. She wonders what else Rey has discovered. Perhaps the relics of an education she should have had in her youth, which she deserved, and which Luke refused her in his last few weeks in the living realm.

  


Leia huddles under a wrap before the small fire she and Poe have built in the abandoned tolium refinery the Resistance now calls home, and finally begins to unload Luke’s box. It is a daunting task, sorting through the few possessions of her dead sibling. One she has deferred for too long. The Lanais, caretakers of the only stone-hut village on Ahch-To, gave her his carefully packaged belongings when she journeyed there with Chewbacca several months after the Battle of Crait. Leia discovered Han’s lucky gold dice, probably salvaged from the Falcon – the real ones, not their spectral replica - resting on Luke’s meditation ledge. This, she knew, was where he gave himself over to the Force. Her brother’s mechanical hand remained there. She let it be. It seems fitting that some vestige of Luke Skywalker should remain at the birthplace of the Jedi faith.

  


She smiles nostalgically, remembers trudging up the six hundred stone steps that ascended to the village, like some rite of passage to enter the holy land. Chewie had carried her for the last hundred or so. She doubts that she could make it even that far, now.

  


Luke’s rough-hewn workaday robes fill out most of the box. Leia touches them lightly to her cheeks; they still smell faintly of her brother. The woven sackcloth is coarse, but thick and warm. She wraps it snugly around her shoulders.

  


Luke was there on Ahch-To, anticipating her arrival. Not the Force-projection that saved the Resistance on Crait, but a shimmering, translucent apparition just like those of their father, Obi-Wan and Yoda on Endor. A Force ghost. He is at peace. It warms her heart to see him, especially now on Seregar, in the rebels’ darkest hour. His visits have been increasingly frequent - almost daily - and as Leia’s physical body wanes, her Force abilities sharpen under his unwavering guidance.

  


She has learned to harness the power that connects and binds all life, a web of energy spanning the cosmos, and reach out. Rey’s blazing, powerful presence in the living Force always beckons her… and beyond, somewhere in the Unknown Regions, she feels her son.

  


If Ben senses her, he never reciprocates, but he is forever too consumed by hatred and fury to even listen. There are others: miniature flames flickering across the galaxy, but their numbers dwindle every time she meditates. In a sector not so far away, she perceives another Force-user, a light too weak for her to connect with – a young woman also taking refuge, in a holy place.

  


Of the box’s remaining contents, one item immediately catches her eye. A long, cylindrical metal hilt – she curses herself for not doing this sooner as she withdraws it, testing its weight in her palm. His lightsaber! A quick glance over her shoulder reaffirms that she is alone in the warehouse. Carefully depressing the activator with her thumb, Leia marvels as its plasma blade blazes to life, casting an ethereal green glow. She rotates her wrist experimentally in narrow arcs, enjoying the vibrant sound of his sword and the ephemeral thrill of power from wielding it.

  


How she would have relished the opportunity to resume her lightsaber training with Luke… but life intervened. First, her responsibilities as an Imperial and Galactic Senator, then as leader of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and finally, as instigator and leader of the Resistance.

  


Motherhood was so often an afterthought. She considers how many times her son was reluctantly dragged from one summit to the next, shushed in a corner like an unwanted appendage, or left behind in the care of a nanny-droid. She retracts the beam, shame and remorse washing over her.

  


Rey so desperately yearned for a Jedi weapon, and Leia has only just discovered it now that she is halfway across the galaxy scavenging for components. A Master’s saber, but then, who remains that could teach Rey? Rey is her own Master. She admonishes herself again for her sentimentality, her reluctance to pore through Luke’s possessions. They have not even bothered yet to unload the Ancient Texts from the shuttle.

  


She shuts her eyes and _feels_.

  


_Rey._ Her luminescent Force-signature almost outshines all else, even from so many systems away.

  


_Rey._ She is distracted and unyielding, but Leia feels her heart swell with affection for the girl nonetheless.

  


_Come back to us, Rey._ Leia doesn’t know if she perceives her, exactly, but feels Rey soothing at her gentle touch through the Force. _When you are ready._

  


Somehow, this orphan scavenger girl from nowhere whom she has grown to love like a daughter will restore balance, peace and unification to the galaxy, a mammoth task that Leia herself has been unable to accomplish in her lifetime. The Force has not shown her how, but as she clasped Rey’s hand and Anakin’s shattered saber, Leia foresaw this with a calming certainty.

  


_We have all we need._

  


“General Organa?” Finn’s tentative voice interrupts her reverie.

  


Leia opens her eyes, swivelling to face him. She smiles again. The former Stormtrooper is ever the eternal optimist, tirelessly training new recruits to their tiny band of Resistance soldiers. He has found his purpose with them, a new identity, and will defend it to the death. He has the indomitable spirit of a true hero.

  


“Our food supplies are running low… and power packs… and… we could probably use more blasters, General. We didn’t factor in so many… uh, challenges... with our last run. It didn’t go to plan.”

  


Leia beckons for him to sit beside her. “Then we must arrange another supply run,” she says evenly, hearing what he really means. _Our morale is running low._ “Take some more of the recruits with you this time, Finn. They will benefit from field experience.” Plus, there is no bounty on their heads, she does not add. They are unrecognisable, at least for the time being.

  


Finn withdraws a map of the Outer Rim Territories from his trouser pocket, drops onto a crate next to her and unfolds it. “Where to this time, General?”

  


“Leia. Please.”

  


He has such difficulty with the informality, she muses, the chain of command so deeply ingrained in his psyche. “Leia,” he forces out. “Wait… what’s that?” His gaze fixates on the shiny object she clasps. He recognises it. Naturally, he does.

  


“My brother’s lightsaber… I only just found it.” She pulls his robes more firmly around her shoulders, inhaling his comforting, familiar scent.

  


“Luke _Skywalker’s_ lightsaber?” His ebony eyes light up as though he was seeing a solar flare for the first time.

  


Leia chuckles wryly. The way the younger ones speak of Luke now, an untouchable paragon of virtue, one would think he was ten feet tall and could blast Force-light from his eyeballs. “Yes.”

  


“Can you...”

  


She shakes her head sadly. “No, Finn. Not any more.” She barely had the energy to carry the box today. Proffering the weapon, she lets him take it and watches his features brighten in wonderment. Unthinkingly, she twists the gold ring about her finger between her opposite forefinger and thumb. “It’s yours, if you want it.”

  


He lets out an awestruck “Ohhh...”

  


“Or give it to Rey, when you see her next.”

  


Finn pauses, lowers the saber and regards her carefully, his eyes full of consternation. She can almost see the wheels turning in that overworked brain of his. “General...” He is clearly struggling with what he has to convey. “I heard… from Poe...”

  


“I know.”

  


“No, no but he thinks… he said… she’s sided with the enemy. I mean, I don’t believe it, of course it’s a load of bantha-fodder, but...”

  


Leia reaches across and rests her petite hand on Finn’s. Han’s gemstone at her ring-finger glints in the firelight. “I know, Finn. We must have hope. I believe in Rey.”

  


“Me too, General. Always.” But his eyes are tired, the slump of his broad shoulders weary, and Leia thinks that if he ever loses his resolve and gives up all hope, she will follow.

  


Human physiology is not equipped for ejection into the vacuum of space, but Leia is uncertain whether this, or the death of her twin brother, has weakened her so. Probably a combination of the two, coupled with years of worry, grief and sleepless nights for her charge as a freedom-fighter. So much loss. So many regrets.

  


It has been weeks since they had clear subspace comms with any of the other rebel strongholds. She can not subdue the livewire of anxiety squirming in her gut – something there is terribly wrong.

  


Oftentimes, when everything is a struggle, she longs to close her eyes and fall into oblivion. That tranquil, star-encrusted infinity of space where she should have stayed, let the bone-chilling frost seep in until it stole her last breath. But she resists. Leia Organa Solo is shepherd to a meagre flock; a regiment of perhaps fifty defying an army of millions. She is their spark of hope in a hopeless situation.

  


She saw Han again this morning, in the red reticular pattern behind her eyelids. He beckoned her to join him, sporting that goofy lopsided grin, opening his arms in a welcoming embrace. _Sweetheart, I think you just can’t bear to let a gorgeous guy like me out of your sight._ She’d laughed, called him a scruffy-looking nerf-herder.

  


~

  


Kylo wakes to unfamiliar surroundings, alone.

  


In the liminal space between dreaming and wakefulness, it takes him several moments to realise that she’s gone. He always dreams of her – sometimes, they brutalise each other in fierce lightsaber combat; other times, like tonight, their lovemaking is so torrid, so feverish, that he would swear his name to the light for another taste. When he awakens to an empty sleeper, with her no longer in his arms, a terrible heaviness settles in the pit of his stomach. He feels as though his heart will break.

  


_No_ , she was never there, he corrects himself. His foolish sentiments are unrequited; Rey made that perfectly clear on the Supremacy.

  


~

  


He lays awake for hours, running his tongue over the backs of his teeth, absently contemplating the peculiar pulsations there whenever she has appeared through their connection recently. He has felt it before, but where? He _remembers_ it. Where is she?

  


The buffeted silence hammers at his mind until he rises to sit, reorientating himself. The Supreme Leader’s chambers aboard Peavey’s Star Destroyer. What is he doing here? Waiting indolently for a handful of bewildered prisoners to become fully lucid? To ascertain the location of a dying breed that no longer poses any significant threat? To appease his misguided, power-hungry whoreson of a General?

  


Kopecz Ren would probably have Kylo rambling across the Mid Rim right now instead, some lone vigilante, defending the welfare of his subjects against the criminal syndicates that apparently wreak havoc in the shadows of the First Order. Always advocating for the underdog, even now as a hermitic Knight of Ren, as he advocated for his fellow padawans at the Jedi Temple on Tython. Kopecz was the oldest of the thirteen, second-in-command to Skywalker, and the other students looked to him unfailingly for guidance in their moments of self-doubt. Kylo must not allow himself to fall back into old habits.

  


He remembers witnessing his grief-stricken Knight seek vengeance for the murder of his young lover. The powerful currents of hatred and fury in the Force surrounding Kopecz as he gracelessly charged their Master for a killing blow, totally disregarding the consequences of challenging one so omniscient in the dark side. And Snoke impassively tore away his lightsaber – along with the arm that brandished it – without so much as stirring from his throne.

  


Kylo had once questioned Master Snoke why he allowed the Twi’lek to live. _You wonder why I keep a ho_ _bbled_ _animal in such a place of power?_ came the dispassionate reply. _He is a clean slate. His spirit is broken. Hatred is the path to the_ _d_ _ark_ _s_ _ide, my young apprentice. His rage will be a sharp tool._

  


Disfiguring one Knight paled in comparison to Ben’s own savagery at Skywalker’s academy. The lesser among them must be winnowed out, Snoke justified, praising Ben again for his slaughter of the five padawans. Mulish cretins who staunchly pledged their eternal allegiance to the Jedi Order, even under pain of death. They’d refused to turn -

  


Kriff. _Maker._

  


That buzzing throb. He _knows_ it.

  


It can’t be!

  


His oversight is inexcusable. She’s _on Tython!_ She’s among the skeletal remains of his victims, the ashes of the temple he burned to the ground.

  


He tenses everywhere, gnashing his teeth, rage boiling through his blood. A splintering sensation blooms in his chest. The modest furnishings and ornaments of his quarters suddenly begin to oscillate; the whole chamber quakes as he throws back the covers and springs to his feet. He dresses quickly, lifts his helmet to his face, reconsiders and sends it hurtling into the mirror, shattering it. Sheathing his sparking fingertips in black leather gloves, he snatches up his weapons and barrels from the room, inky cloak billowing behind him.

  


“ _Prepare my ship!_ ” he thunders at the Stormtroopers marching ahead in the passageway, who break into a run and scatter. Igniting the lightwhip in his right hand, the amethyst saber in his left, he destroys all in his path: doors, illumination panels, droids and computers, his mind aboil with wrath. It takes all of his restraint not to carve sparking gashes into the turbolift as it rises to the sixth hangar, where his Upsilon-class command shuttle awaits.

  


The commotion has roused Hux, whose quarters were adjacent to Kylo’s. His petulant voice, groggy with sleep, whines over Kylo’s wristlink. “What _now_ , Ren?”

  


“ _Don’t you fracking touch them!”_ Kylo bellows back into the device, and deactivates it before the sadistic Hutt-spawn can reply.

  


Mitaka is already seated at the control panel running pre-flight checks, his haste in accommodating the Supreme Leader’s impulsive whim evident the askew set of his officer’s cap, the imperfect creases of his uniform. Kylo reaches over his shoulder – the pilot shudders and inches away as he does so – and programs familiar coordinates into the navicomputer, then retreats to the aft of the shuttle. Ninety six standard hours, he calculates, and he will hunt her down.

  


But what then?

 

 

 


	10. Qxc4 c6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her morale is shattered. Divided, the Resistance will not stand a chance. Perhaps this is what Leia intuitively understood all along.

 

 

“Follow me, sister, and the d-d-doing gets done.”

  


Rey hesitates, sceptical. This dubious character is not Force-sensitive, as she had first thought. She can’t even be sure he’s an ally.

  


“And play along, yo.”

  


She narrows her eyes at the larcenist stranger as she trails him toward the trader’s tent. She has already watched him pilfer various knick knacks from at least five vendors’ tables and market-goers’ knapsacks, his cracked, leathery fingers sliding in and out with the practised ease of a magician’s. Dressed in a full-length leather coat, well-worn work boots and a scrofulous-looking cap, with oil-smudged skin, a hoary beard and shifty eyes, he had drawn her attention among the sea of marketgoers immediately. The gold band across his right fourth finger, however - unmistakeably a Resistance insignia ring - gave her the impetus to single him out.

  


He pulls back the urtya tent flap and paws at his cap in a vague attempt to straighten it. A tarnished metal plate on its side is emblazoned with letters she can not recognise.

  


“You comin’?” he calls over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought.

  


Reluctantly, she follows. She knows from listening to Leia’s and Poe’s communications that the other two Resistance cells are comprised of a motley crew from the impoverished Outer Rim sectors, like this unsavoury individual. Without funding, organised leadership or regimentation, she is astounded that they have lasted even this long. She decides to pardon this miscreant’s minor transgressions; Force knows how many supply crates her own comrades in the Resistance have obtained for themselves at gunpoint these past few months.

  


Landing on Dathomir was unavoidable. It may have been two parsecs from her planned refuelling point, but Rey had awoken in a puddle of sweat to observe the muted glow of the control panel had switched to a rapidly blinking red. The thermal control system had failed, its energy cells leaking corrosive fluid, circuitry degraded beyond repair. Much further, and she would have broiled in the cockpit right along with its single sublight engine. A thorough inventory of the service hatch revealed – to her dismay – an ancillary toolkit and little else. No spare parts whatsoever. Ironic, really – she grew up learning starcraft maintenance and is one of the Resistance’s foremost mechanics, yet now, when her life depends on it, is at the mercy of strangers. Doomed from the outset, should anything malfunction.

  


At least the multisensor trackers still worked. The deflector shields didn’t. Nor did its laser cannon. The only shuttle they could spare for her will detect approaching craft but can neither attack, nor shield against an attack. She hopes, by the grace of the Force, it will last the return journey to Seregar.

  


But first -

  


“Now, what you got p-payment-wise, b-b-buddy?” The vagrant is appraising her from the entrance, inspecting her satchel and the bloodstained scraps she is wearing.

  


Rey frowns. “Look at me. Nothing.”

  


The man snorts. “I _am_ looking at you, sweetheart,” he replies, a lecherous note to his voice that has her spinning on her heel, turning back towards the bustling crowd. Leaving her face uncovered on a foreign planet was a huge risk. The rough-hewn fabric had grated at her forehead wound as she wrapped it, and was impossible to secure. Better to be a faceless nobody than parade about with blood-soaked head bandaging. At least there is no glimmer of recognition there; he seems unaware of whatever bounty the First Order have placed upon her head.

  


“Well, if you won’t help me -”

  


“Wait-wait-wait,” he appeases, holding up his grimy palms as if in surrender. The Resistance ring is not the only one he wears, she notes; the one adjacent to it is embellished with an amber gemstone, and the next, a silver plate imprinted with an ornate emblem. “I c-can help. Starship c-components are hard to come by in these p-p-parts, sister, if you don’t know who to ask. I know. Who to ask. Just a little, um, t-token of appreciation. That’s all.”

  


The shuttle’s log recorder held coordinates of a Resistance cell’s barracks on Dathomir. How long ago that particular log was created, she doesn’t know. Praying for a miracle, she had charted a new course on the astrogation controls and prepared for a rough landing. The planet loomed before her in the viewport, rose-coloured and smog-dull, the galactic epicentre of the dark side of the Force which her comrades had inexplicably chosen for refuge.

  


“You’re not Resistance,” she replies flatly.

  


He tilts his head to one side, offering her a floppy grin. “What makes you think I was?” When she doesn’t answer, he continues smugly. “Let me learn you s-something, huh? Resistance, F-f-first Order, whatever. It’s all a machine. Looking to t-turn everyone into a c-c-cog.”

  


He slips into the tent, and after a second, Rey hesitantly follows.

  


The rancid chemical fumes within make her head spin straight away, underpinned with the acrid tang of smoke and excrement. This haunt does not look like any starship mechanic’s trade centre she has ever encountered. Its sidewalls are pockmarked with burn holes. The packed dirt floor is overlain with stained, mouldy Huj mats, with a gaggle of humanoids – mostly white-skinned Zabraks - sprawled on each, chattering and exchanging small plasti-foil packets. She counts eighteen beings in total, not one of them lucid or coherent, their Force currents murky and distorted. Unlike every trader’s table she has passed in the Nightbrothers village market so far, there are no wares on display.

  


Rey shoots a quizzical glance at her chaperone. “Energy cells,” she insists doubtfully.

  


He snickers. “All good things come to those who wait, p-p-partner,” he says. “What-choo got to b-barter with? Did I spy me a gold gewgaw in that satchel o’yours? That real, or p-p-plated?”

  


He’s talking about the dice, she realises. “They’re not for -”

  


“Or _that_.” He gestures to the Knight’s lightsaber hilt affixed to her belt. “If that’s what I think it is, then you’re b-better at this than _me_ , buddy.”

  


In the corner of her eye, Rey sees one of the humanoids on the floor, a yellow Togruta, empty the contents from a packet onto a pocket mirror, arranging the amber powder into thin lines with a square of flexiplast. “Crinkin’ Teeps better…” he grumbles under his breath. His head-tails begin to quiver excitedly as he rolls the clear flexiplast into a thin tube and raises it to one nostril. An Abednedo beside him lies spreadeagled, staring raptly at the apex of the tent with pupils constricted to pinpoints, quietly giggling to itself.

  


“I c-coulda had them b-b-both by now if I wanted,” the stranger snarks, interweaving his grubby fingers together and cracking his knuckles.

  


Rey has had just about enough of this vagrant.

  


“Just show me to the merchant, and we’re done,” she throws back. The Togruta snuffles loudly in her periphery, then lets out an indulgent groan.

  


“P-patience, sister. He c-comin’.”

  


His insignia ring is definitely stolen, she thinks. It was folly of her to ask this grifter for help. Approaching the marketplace, Rey had shut her eyes and opened herself to the Force, searching for an ally. The black-clad figure among thousands of other jostling bodies, whose sand-shrouds and gauzy beige wraps blended in perfectly with the featureless cracked-clay earth, had drawn her like a homing beacon.

  


“Gimme that!” A bald female Zabrak snatches at the Togruta’s mirror.

  


“Git your own, scum!” it retorts.

  


Across the den, others are cutting lines, dry-swallowing pills, drawing up syringes. A haggard, wrinkled Zabrak whose cranium sports eight horns strikes a lighter aflame and his cohort of five others lean in, each delicately pinching a scarlet deathstick to their lips. On another mat, a brunette man taps a small mound of phosphorescent blue powder from a vial onto the hollow at the base of his thumb. His pink tongue darts out to lap it up. The tattooed Dathomirian beside him tightens a rubber tourniquet around his exposed bicep with his teeth, slapping the vein at the crook of his elbow with the opposite hand. His milky-white skin is already scored with track marks.

  


The Zabrak woman launches herself at the yellow head-tailed humanoid, who loses his grip on the mirror as she strikes him, rolled flexiplast still protruding from one nostril. “Kriffing selfish sithspawn! Givvit!” she screeches.

  


The remaining dust empties onto the dirty rug. “Sculag!” he bellows. “Look what you’ve -” Her swift punch to his right eye abruptly silences him.

  


A cold dread tingles down Rey’s spine. Not able to stomach any more, she turns her back and hastens for the tent flap, ignoring the thief’s insipid protests and the scuffle erupting behind her.

  


Before she can escape, her exit is blocked. A shrivelled, toothless old man lumbers feebly through the lip of the tent, guiding a skimboard-mounted crate behind him. Like the thief, he is dressed conspicuously in worn black leather, an open airspeeder’s jacket hanging from his bony frame and an aviator’s cap resting atop his head. The addicts’ excitement at his arrival is palpable, buzzing through the charged air.

  


Seeing the dishevelled young woman barrelling toward him, he grins, chapped lips pulling back to reveal cracked, brownish teeth.

  


“Patience, child,” he croons, saccharine-sweet, then, raising his voice to his waiting audience, “Candyman’s here!”

  


The uproar at her back crescendos.

  


“Get out of my way!” Rey spits back.

  


The senex cocks his head curiously, furrowing his brow. “You’re new,” he mumbles. “Buyin’, or sellin’?”

  


“Leaving,” she snaps.

  


Ignoring her response, he rasps toward the commotion, “Children! _Chil_ -dren! Behave yourselves. Re-ups… y’all ready?”

  


Callused fingers suddenly encircle her wrist. “Buying,” the thief answers gruffly behind her, roughly yanking her back into him. “Well… I’m b-buying, she p-p-paying.”

  


“I got my cutters to attend to, boy,” the old man gripes, dragging the hovering crate closer. “Spice don’t cut itself, y’know.” Squinting, he directs a penetrating stare at Rey. “You won’t get much for this one.”

  


“What’s wrong with her, T-teeps?”

  


Rey rips her arm free of his grasp, whirling back to face him, her teeth bared in disgust. She visualises this greasy pickpocket’s neck snapping, and it feels good. “ _No_ ,” she grits out, appalled. Close up, she can read two words engraved into the cheap metal plate on his cap: DON’T JOIN. “I didn’t agree to -”

  


“No offence, sister,” he replies nonchalantly. “Said you had nothin’ to t-t-trade. Just need me a little -”

  


“ _Frack. You._ ” she snaps.

  


He shrugs, unfazed. “Just b-business, buddy.”

  


The other patrons are beginning to rise around them now, climbing to their feet with drug-addled sluggishness, clamouring for the slythmonger’s attention. “Caaaandyman!” warbles someone behind her.

  


The old man rolls his eyes as if treading a very well-worn path. Stooping down to the crate, he tugs open its lid, cold vapour spilling out from within. “Well, my friend...” Reaching inside with rigid, claw-like fingers, he withdraws a vaccuum-sealed plastene packet. “Your girl’s too reedy, for one. Look at that.” He jabs the corner of the packet harshly into Rey’s ribcage, exposed through a charred hole in her tunic. “You can count her kriffin’ ribs. No tits to speak of, neither.”

  


Mortified, Rey growls and bats the packet aside, hearing his throaty chuckle at her indignation.

  


“A pauper’s whore, maybe,” he adds.

  


“All of ‘em w-worth _something_ ,” argues the bandit, pooching his lower lip in a resentful pout.

  


His words earn him a violent shove with the Force – not enough for Rey to draw unwanted attention to herself, but just sufficient to overbalance him. He yelps and crashes backward onto a mat, sending eddies of dust and multicoloured powder into the air.

  


“Hatunga!” he cusses.

  


The other addicts regard him fleetingly with indifferent smirks.

  


“And that gash on your face, lil’ lady,” Teeps continues, addressing Rey now, “it’s gonna fester and stink. Y’been in a fight? Y’lookin’ worse for wear. No one wants to screw a disfigured -”

  


“ _Shut up!_ ” she screams, storming past.

  


“Y’want your hit, boy, you bring me somethin’ o’value,” the dealer declares over shrill wails of _Candyman! Candyman!_ as she bursts free of the squalid den.

  


Ejected into the throng of marketgoers once again, Rey draws an unsteady breath, filling her lungs with the humid air that is blessedly free of foul synthetic smoke. A narco-spice den. Why in the Maker’s name would the Force have led her here? A chaotic stream of thoughts flows through her consciousness, each one burbling up and over the last – her crippled shuttle, the Resistance barracks that were not where they were supposed to be… what she will do if she is stranded here. The crowd sweeps her up and jostles her forward, and she lets it, trying to catch a glimpse of the peddlers’ wares laid out on rugs and tables.

  


The Resistance needs her. _Leia_ needs her.

  


Everything Rey holds dear – everything she _is_ \- is light-years away, at the edge of the Outer Rim. Perhaps she can negotiate a lift, but the vagrant did have a point. What does she have to bargain with?

  


Someone is following her; she can feel it, but can not bring herself to care.

  


It’s irrelevant, she decides. While others may haggle over price and present their own finery for bartering, she can be very… _persuasive_ … should she find something she needs. Just a small push. The weak-minded easily succumb to her will, if she concentrates.

  


And underneath it all, the slythmonger’s asinine remarks: she is maimed, undesirable. It gnaws at her in a way that makes no sense. Rey is a warrior; strength and skill are all that are required of her body. Aesthetics should be superfluous.

  


But it still hurts.

  


She wonders again how much the First Order thinks she’s worth.

  


 

~

  


 

Minutes stretch into hours, navigating through the sprawling marketplace. There is noise everywhere, aliens of all shapes and sizes arguing and haggling, wailing children, two Zabraks fighting angrily about who pushed whom first. Rey meticulously inspects all of the wares on offer. No starship pieces - not even so much as scrap wire. She almost wishes she was back on Jakku; amongst the wreckage in the spaceship graveyard, she would no doubt have located and pried loose everything she needs within a standard hour. Her mind races - her one-man starhopper was by far the most decrepit compared with the other yachts and frigates in the field where she set it down. Provided they are unmanned – or even if they aren’t – what would be to stop her from climbing aboard and… borrowing... whatever she deems necessary?

  


“Hey, kid!” Her wrap snags on something, jerking her backwards.

  


Rey pivots, her right hand seeking out the butt of her blaster, freeing it from her belt.

  


It’s the narco-spice dealer. Eyeing the weapon, he backs off a step, releasing her garment. “ _Kriff_ , girl! No need for that.”

  


“What do you want?” she challenges.

  


“Nuffin’. Just to say – y’ought to find you a new pimp. One that -” he gestures pointedly towards her slashed shins and shoulder, her swollen throat, her forehead - “takes care of his merchandise.”

  


She considers raising the NN-14, blasting the slythmonger’s skull to smithereens.

  


“And… no hard feelin’s, child, ‘kay?” He leers at her and tugs off his synthleather cap, uncovering a fringe of grey-white hair around his balding, mottled scalp. His wizened face puckers as he rubs it with one spotted hand. “Lemme offer you a lil’ somethin’-somethin’, free of charge. For goodwill. I could always use another cutter…?”

  


_Rey? Is that your name?_ another voice intones, itching the back of her mind.

  


“Spicewebs don’t process themselves, y’know,” Teeps asserts again. “Krongin’ glit-biters, all I got now. Shootin’ up half the G-bombs before they hits the market. Trust ‘em ‘bout as far as I could throw ‘em. Ever tried the stuff? Glitterstim? Free your motherfrackin’ mind, it will.”

  


_Rey?_ it repeats.

  


She refocuses, searching the crowd behind the old man, packed tightly and flowing like shrivelled leaves scudding in the wind. They do not appear to have attracted anyone’s interest. The voice is unmistakeably male, but too weak and high-pitched to be Ben’s, and muffled, as if coming from behind a vacuum mask.

  


She is tiring of the chatter in her head.

  


_Go away,_ she thinks back.

  


“Or you want some ryll? One shot, and you’ll forget your troubles for good.” He grins broadly, jabbing one index finger at the crook of his elbow. “I got samples, kid.”

  


_The one you came with is a petty thief. He can’t help you. I can._

  


Rey pauses, trying to listen over the sordid greybeard’s banter.

  


“Black hole, perhaps? Goes down a treat. Tap in to your dark side.” He chortles at his own double entendre, picking out a tiny plasti-foil bag from the inside of his sweaty cap. “Number one seller.”

  


_You’re with the Resistance, right? Well, so am I._

  


She scours the marketgoers for its source, oblivious now to the spice dealer.

  


“Love-wallops? Rissle sticks? A lil’ Mind Juice? Fresh from Genarius, m’dear. Deee-lish. I got’m all.”

  


_Behind you,_ it adds, bemused.

  


Rey glances over her shoulder. It’s the brunette addict from the tent, swathed in beige robes. Had he not pursued her, she would never have recognised him – but what she remembers is a stern-faced, bright-eyed officer with pristinely coiffed hair, serving alongside Leia. The past solar cycle has not been kind to this man; his face has a weathered, browbeaten look to it, with sallow skin and glazed, heavy-lidded eyes that appear to be trying to retreat inside his head. His body gently sways from side to side, shoulders hunched in like he is trying to disappear inside himself.

  


_There’s a subterranean base less than a klick from Nightbrothers. I’ll take you there._

  


“Well? Ladies’ choice.”

  


This parasite isn’t worth the commotion of blasterfire. In an instant, Rey has restowed her NN-14 and closed the distance between herself and the slythmonger. Teeps reeks of pungent sweat and stale alcohol – an unsettlingly familiar stench from years long gone, that makes her skin crawl. She fists one hand into the front of his grimy tunic before he can react. The other delivers a sharp right hook to the old man’s jaw.

  


“Spices are a degenerate’s pastime,” she seethes, holding him in place. “And I belong to no one.”

  


In spite of his now-bloodied lip, the cretin chuckles again. “It’s a livin’, kid.” He raises a salacious eyebrow. “I got jet-juice and firespice too, sweetie, if that’s your thing. Might even git yourself a customer?”

  


That warrants another blow, this time slammed into his windpipe. It knocks him flat in the dirt. When he doesn’t try to get up, Rey turns to confront the stranger.

  


_Let’s go_ , she thinks at him, clenching her fists a fraction tighter.

  


The man nods. “Geno Namit,” he greets, drawing back the lapel of his robe to reveal a faded Resistance operations tunic underneath, a naval captain’s patch at his left chest pocket. “I know your face, I think. From Crait. It’s all a bit… foggy now. Before I came here, to serve under Commander D’Acy.”

  


“Are you a member of... the Church of the Force?” Rey guesses.

  


“Oh, that.” Namit grins and clucks his tongue, tapping a finger to his forehead. “No, ma’am. That’s just the glitterstim. It doesn’t last.”

  


She scowls. Surely it would never be in a military leader’s best interests, being inebriated with mind-altering narco-spice.

  


The captain laughs as though she had voiced her thoughts aloud. “Perhaps not, Rey.” He shambles past her, lurching treacherously with every step, toward the unconscious old man. Prising the leather cap from the slythmonger’s gnarled fingers, he reaches inside, grabbing a fistful of plasti-foil. “I’m not the only one, either. But we all have our vices, don’t we? We all need to survive, somehow.”

  


He stuffs the pilfered packets into his trouser pocket and beckons for her to follow.

  


 

~

  


 

The Resistance’s subterranean base is more expansive than she could possibly have imagined, a complex network of tunnels spanning at least several klicks, artificially lit with ancient illumination panels. The only giveaways to its existence are discreetly positioned manholes - one at the outskirts of Nightbrothers, the others hidden within the dense woodlands beyond it. Their hangar is equally inconspicuous; an enormous below-ground cavern with an automated retractable ceiling, previously a den for captured rancors to be trafficked off-world and sold on the black market, Namit tells her. Their handful of primary cargo ships, used predominantly for supply missions, are stationed indiscriminately among those of visiting marketeers just beyond the village.

  


With such a transient village population, their hidden community has passed largely unnoticed thus far, and has thrived. There are freshwater rivers and an abundance of burra fish and veeka for hunting; the Resistance has a bottomless supply of fresh food and water, in addition to the proteinloaf and synthsteak that comes with every supply run. Their numbers have burgeoned to over a thousand, with more new arrivals every week, alerted by word of mouth.

  


Whoever dug these passageways tunnelled for the softest soil, with no regard for how straight it was. Most were excavated many generations ago to transport narco-spices incognito, Namit explains, and were extended as the Resistance cell grew in number. As he guides Rey past medicentres, mess halls, makeshift classrooms for their children, and rows upon rows of dormitories, she can’t help but ponder the logistics of evacuating a population so large, should the need arise. Leia’s entire cell had vacated Peveron within minutes, at her warning.

  


“Won’t be necessary,” he asserts. “We’ve laid low for this long, and we’re going to keep it that way.”

  


“Stop it,” she grumbles.

  


Namit lets out a heavy sigh. “Apologies, ma’am. It’s wearing off already, if that’s any consolation.” His pace is flagging to a slow shuffle as they progress through the tunnels, she notes.

  


Poe and Leia have imparted a bare minimum of their planned military operations to her these past few months, but Rey always suspected they were conspiring to mount at least some form of attack. “You’re all hiding? That’s no way to live.”

  


He shakes his head sadly. “It’s our lot in life, Rey. You don’t know what it’s like for the common man on worlds the First Order has shunned… or slaves, on those they haven’t. By comparison, this is paradise.”

  


“Is that why you came here?” she asks.

  


“Not quite.” The captain pauses. “It’s… soul-destroying after years of service, reporting bad news to your General, time and time again. Here… there was hope. We received a few transmissions after Crait, from the Outer Rim - people wanting to join our cause. They needed a base. And leadership.”

  


“You answered the call.”

  


“I volunteered, along with D’Acy. And then...” He stares down the tunnel wistfully. “Then they just kept trickling in, and we formed this community that we have. There are families here, Rey. Expatriates from all over the cosmos. We still have barracks – above-ground, there’s a firing range in the forest, and below, flight simulation and combat training – but if we never actually go to war… maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

  


They veer left, allowing a group of flight-suited men to pass. A couple nod acknowledgement at the captain and their newcomer.

  


“There’s still hope on Seregar,” Rey protests.

  


The captain yawns, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes, and gestures to the metal cylinder clipped to her belt. “Hope, yes. I see that. You must be the Jedi who will take down our Supreme Leader.”

  


She turns her face away, wondering how deeply the short-lived narco-spice enables him to delve.

  


“How is General Organa, ma’am, if I may ask?”

  


“She’s well,” Rey replies, a little too brightly, and Namit’s face falls.

  


“I see.”

  


“Don’t you speak with her? I thought she was coordinating the entire army.”

  


“We were, and she was.” The captain ushers her into an offshoot passage, avoiding an oncoming rabble of children being herded forward by two Rodians, honking and hooting through scaly green snouts. “We were awaiting the general’s orders. There was talk of buying First Order clearance codes on the black market, infiltrating their Star Destroyers… but it never transpired. And two weeks ago, our advanced comms transceiver malfunctioned. We’ve lost comms with the other strongholds. Not impossible to fix, but...”

  


Rey doesn’t need to read his thoughts to anticipate what he is about to divulge. “D’Acy doesn’t want to go to war again,” she finishes for him.

  


Namit nods resignedly, his bloodshot eyes searching her face. “None of us do, Rey. We want to preserve what little we have.” He waits for several beats, expecting an argument, but she is silent. “I remember what life was like under the New Republic, before the Order. Watching the suns rise and set. Training for the Core Worlds tournament in grav-ball. Fishing with my boy at the lake.”

  


She brushes his arm. Must they all forfeit their freedom, in order to cling to that which they cherish the most? “You can’t lose hope, Geno,” she urges gently.

  


He grins again, a smile that does not reach his eyes. Sweat-damp hair veils his face. “Any attack on the First Order now would be suicide. Our hope is right here, ma’am. We find strength in each other. We mustn’t take what we have for granted, ever. My family is here, and I wouldn’t give that up for all the stars in the universe.”

  


“But you’re sacrificing so much,” she whispers.

  


“Easily forgotten,” he replies, tapping his left trouser pocket knowingly. “When you get back to Seregar, tell the general… tell her… we only want peace. And that your regiment is always welcome here.”

  


_If_. _If_ she gets back to Seregar. There’s still a faint irritation at the base of her skull. The effect of the captain’s spice is rapidly dwindling.

  


“Yes, I’ll have our mechanics repair your shuttle for you, as best we can,” he adds. “And… fetch you some decent clothes.”

  


 

~

  


 

It’s not technically mutiny, if they haven’t received orders to the contrary. They apparently won’t trust her to relay their pacifist message to Leia verbally, at least with the import it deserves. Instead, Commander D’Acy gives her a sealed missive to take back. Rey promises to deliver it. She resolves to hand it over without a word. Feign ignorance. Leia has already lost so much, and Rey will only add to her burdens. What else would she say? _A_ _n army twenty times_ _the_ _size_ _of ours_ _, with infinitely more resources, is abandoning the fight._

  


Rey’s starhopper is in a state of disrepair more dire than she had feared. D’Acy’s mechanics replace the thermal control system, but its stabilising systems are temperamental at best. For such an outdated vessel, spare parts are near impossible to source. They patch it up with whatever they have at hand, give her clear instructions on rewiring the pitch sensor, should her vessel start tumbling through space, and advise with barely-concealed pity that it will be good for little other than scrap metal after it next makes planetfall. A deflector shield projector from a long-dead light freighter has been transplanted into her ship, now hanging from the astrogator panel from a stalk of messy wires, like a muja fruit. The wiring is sloppy. At least it might confer some protection, should she come under attack. Her laser cannon was unfixable.

  


“May the Force be with you, my dear,” Commander D’Acy farewells her, raising a fist in solidarity. _Maker knows, you’re going to need it_ , she refrains from adding, but Rey hears it all the same.

  


Before climbing back up to the surface, she wraps her arms around Namit’s shoulders, pulling him in close for a hug. He cringes, disconcerted at the show of affection from a near stranger - but after a long moment, half-heartedly squeezes her back.

  


“Don’t give up hope, Captain,” she whispers in his ear.

  


Their embrace ends as abruptly as it began. He’s perspiring, tremulous, and already thinking about his next hit.

  


 

~

  


 

The flesh-coloured orb of Dathomir grows smaller and smaller through the viewport as her starhopper soars away. Her comrades have been generous – the shuttle is fully fuelled, water and rations replenished in excess of what she will need for the journey, and she is clothed in a clean, sleeveless tunic and lounge pants.

  


Her morale is shattered. Divided, the Resistance will not stand a chance. Perhaps this is what Leia intuitively understood all along.

  


A cursory perusal of the controls reaffirms that for now, everything is in working order. She prays she will not need to stake her life on whether the freighter’s shields are compatible with her vessel. Rey stares blankly through the transparisteel as the shuttle begins its hyperjump, looking at but not really seeing white-gold pinpoints of light dotted across an inky background as they stretch into lurid lines. For a second, she feels light-headed and weightless – that evanescent sensation of a craft exceeding lightspeed. It quickly passes. She will be caged in this claustrophobic space for ten standard days, now – the shuttle has been deemed unsafe for a hyperjump beyond twelve parsecs.

  


Does it even matter any more?

  


Drawing her heels up onto the pilot’s chair, Rey curls in on herself, burying her face in the cradle of her arms. She would like to tear D’Acy’s flimsiplast letter to shreds. Had she not been so violent with the comlink, she could be relaying the message right now, to at least spare herself ten days of fretting. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Leia is tirelessly optimistic, a shrewd tactician.

  


Leia will come up with something.

  


_Rey._

  


She scrunches her eyes shut, fingers clawing at her temples. Not again. First, the Knight’s ramblings and his psychotic chorus, then the captain’s slurred, spice-fuelled monologue, and now this? Is she going mad, like Pla Ren?

  


_Rey._

  


No… it’s Leia. Her voice isn’t as tangible as Ben’s through their connection, but it’s unquestionably _her_. Rey stills, straining to listen over the shuttle’s churning sublight engine.

  


_Come back to us, Rey._

  


“Leia? Leia, I’m here...” she murmurs into the rarefied air.

  


_When you are ready._

  


“I’m ready. I’m on my way back, right now.” Her eyes dart hopefully from right to left, as though her mentor might materialise in the cockpit. “I’m coming!”

  


As easily as it manifested, whatever presence Leia conjured through the Force disperses. Rey is left alone in the pilot’s chair, hunched into a ball, feeling more despondent than before.

  


 

~

  


 

Less than two standard days into her voyage, she breaks her resolve, pushes her mind beyond its limits, and reaches out to Ben.

  


Not to concede defeat, or confess to the Supreme Leader that the enemy faction has probably given up and the First Order shall reign supreme forever. Although, in due course, she supposes he will learn of his victory.

  


It’s just that… she’s unbearably lonely.

  


Behind the mask, there's a man whose isolation and sorrow mirror her own. It’s always there, lurking at the edge of her thoughts, readily ignored... but in moments like now – the deafening silence that stretches on and on – demanding attention. She wants to feel the soft warmth of his fingers grazing hers. To look into his molten dark eyes and hear that deep, velvety voice comforting her, reassuring her again that she is not alone. Someone who understands how a lifetime of loneliness and loss can erode you until nothing remains. She had… seen something in Ben, reached for him across the galaxy from Ahch-To when there was no one, and he had reached back. She longs for that again now. A man with whom she can just be Rey, not some glorified legend that she can never hope to live up to, carrying the hopes and dreams of her comrades-in-arms.

  


She wants to know that there is something just for her in this universe, besides despair and rejection.

  


Surely he will excuse her barging through the bond during his shower last time. He must realise she has no control over their interludes. She has tried – unsuccessfully – to banish the image of his naked, well-muscled physique from memory, lest she inadvertently summon him in such a state again.

  


Not that that would be such a bad thing.

  


Rey closes her eyes and breathes, slow and deep, until the otherworldly cord takes shape behind her eyelids, faintly pulsing. She extends towards it – with her hand or with her soul, she can’t be sure – and strums it delicately, like a quetarra string.

  


_Ben?_

  


She plucks it again. This time its standing wave is shortened, as if someone were grasping the other end.

  


_Ben… are you there?_

  


Its vibration amplifies then suddenly stills, pulled taut.

  


A heavy lull. She holds her breath, waiting.

  


_I’m here._

  


There’s no warmth to his words.

  


Her eyelids fluttering open, Rey swivels to face the interior of the tiny shuttle. It has changed again, transmogrified into a large space that could only be a sleeping chamber, with its coal-black walls and austere furnishings. For one fantastic, surreal second, she imagines launching herself through to his side of the connection, leaving behind the crushing weight of responsibility to her compatriots. _I’ll join you,_ _Ben,_ she thinks, pressing her lips into a thin line. _Just don’t hurt them._

  


The red illumination panel casts an unnerving hue over his face – as if it were painted with blood. Ben’s steely dark gaze snaps up to meet her and he leaps to his feet, upending whatever he had been seated upon; it disappears as it loses contact with him, but she can hear it crash into the deck. The datapad he was holding is flung aside without a second glance. It, too, vanishes – then a splintering sound erupts as it strikes something and shatters to pieces.

  


The most dangerous man in the galaxy looms before her, his hulking body tense, inky cloak swirling at his boots, his huge hands balled into fists.

  


Rey rises warily to her feet. “...Ben?”

  


Without a word, he rushes at her, snarling and furious.

  


This was a mistake. She tries to back away, but her thighs immediately strike the control panel. There’s nowhere to run.

  


Panicking now, Rey lets go of the thread.

  


Ben’s charging image evaporates – she sees his rage intensify as he registers what is happening – and he’s gone. The shuttle’s greyish hull is restored once again, drab and confined.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translation:**  
>  _Sculag_ = a Chiss term, referring to someone who is weak-minded
> 
>  **Minor Characters from The Last Jedi:**  
>  Olvin Teeps [here](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Olvin_Teeps)  
> Cpt. Geno Namit [here](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Geno_Namit)


	11. e4 Nbd7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _No._ She’s not getting away so easily. Not this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical inspiration for this chapter, the fourth segment in particular: [Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0nmHymgM7Y)

 

 

 _No_. She’s not getting away so easily. Not this time.

  


He seizes the red astral thread in a deathgrip, violently wrenching it back into him. His face is a twisted mask of fury as she suddenly reappears before him, eyes widening in alarm, her mouth falling agape. He closes the short distance between them in seconds.

  


Before Rey comprehends what is happening, where she is, he has clamped his gloved hands tightly around the balls of her shoulders and he is roaring, enraged, shaking her to punctuate every syllable.

  


“Why? _Why?_ Why _there_?”

  


He jerks her hard enough to make her teeth chatter. Her hair falls loose and obscures her face in a messy veil.

  


“What's left there for you? _Nothing!_ Skeletons? Rubble?!”

  


Rey writhes in his grasp, manages to inch backward, but he holds firm.

  


“Scavenger,” he hisses. He would sooner sever their maddening force bond once and for all than have her picking through the remains of his slain victims, listening to the voices of the dead in the birthplace of his dark persona.

  


She ducks, frantically twisting from his long fingers clutching her shoulders, retreats another step. Kylo redoubles his hold on the sparking livewire that tethers them together; there will be no escape for her, not until he is satisfied. Advancing on her much smaller form, he crowds her into the corner of his quarters, her back striking an unseen wall on her side of the connection as she realises she is trapped.

  


“ _Why?”_ he bellows again, and she flinches as if struck.

  


Rey instinctively fumbles at the back of her belt, where he knows the rebel soldiers stuff their blasters, to no avail. She is physically hemmed in, his imposing black form towering over her and barricading any escape, his arms bracketing her in place. Raising her forearms protectively across her face and chest – a habit she no doubt learned amidst the neverending peril of a scavenger’s life on Jakku, her gaze snaps from right to left, seeking assistance. There is none.

  


“I… I…” She swallows hard and winces, her terrified eyes fixed on her oppressor. A peculiar shadowing marks her throat. She flicks tangled locks of chestnut hair away from her face, revealing a deep, jagged gash across her forehead caked with hair and dirty scab, cringing as the wound reopens. In desperation, she cranes her neck up to the ceiling, probably trying to harness the Force and free herself from her entrapment in this connection.

  


At the sight of the ugly purple bruise marring her windpipe, the blue-black fingerprints imprinted on either side of her delicate neck, the inferno of his rage is suddenly extinguished, like an engine that has burned its last drop of coaxium. He stills, mortified, deflated.

  


“I don’t know…” Rey sets her jaw, squares her shoulders in a veneer of boldness, but her glassy eyes and quivering lower lip betray her. “Let me go.”

  


“Who did this to you?!” he demands.

  


“Ben -” she scrunches her eyes shut, biting her lip - “there was nothing there for me. Let me go.”

  


The tension is almost palpable between them as both stand their ground. He tries again, his deep voice softer, gently coaxing. “Who did this to you, Rey?” He advances closer; she has nowhere to go. It must have been one of his, one of the First Order, he registers, chagrined and ashamed.

  


Nimble as a lothcat, she weaves underneath his outstretched arm and retreats to a safer distance along the wall, keeping her weight low. She is entirely prepared to flee from him. Not that it will do any good. She meets his gaze now with trepidation. “You know who,” she says quietly. “You told me… you told me how to fight back.”

  


Kylo doesn’t understand, not really, but his eyes flicker momentarily to the lightsaber hilt tucked into her belt where previously there was none. She didn’t reach for it to defend herself against him just now, but instead for a blaster that wasn't there... it isn’t instinctual… yet. Had he not felt that telltale fracture in the Force from aboard the Falcon? This tiny slip of a girl – woman - is an indomitable warrior. Someone challenged her… and lost. Their weapon, her trophy.

  


“Pla Ren,” he murmurs.

  


Rey frowns, silently deliberating. Allows him to come closer. “Yes.”

  


He had all but given up on the Kel Dor. Pla Ren’s garrulous ramblings at Council gatherings had become more and more incoherent over time. He was too easily distracted, preoccupied with the pursuit of power and his mastery of Sith magic, to the point where his constant interruption at tactics meetings was a hindrance. Hux had hinted to the Supreme Leader on more than one occasion that Pla Ren’s premature demise might be fortuitous for the First Order. When his hologram failed to appear one day, it was an unspoken relief. After a month of unexplained absence, he was presumed dead, and Captain Opan acceded to his post in the Core Worlds.

  


Having witnessed his Knight spiralling into insanity – a path he himself would tread, should the situation continue unchecked – Kylo was thankful to have seen the last of him. He would have been loathed to kill a creature that he had inadvertently created.

  


Unless it threatened _her._

  


He unclenches his jaw, his fists. “You shouldn’t have gone.” His expression is somewhere between outrage and humiliation. “It was a mistake.”  
  


“I know,” she replies meekly to her boots. “I never meant… I just wanted… because we broke my lightsaber, and…”

  


“It belonged to _me_ ,” he corrects, but the malice is gone from his voice. Another step; she is near enough now to embrace, should he so wish. She appears so deceptively fragile, clad in an overlarge sleeveless tunic and trousers, her soft brown hair concealing her face. So vulnerable. “Let me see.”

  


He reaches for her and gently takes her chin between gloved fingers, tilting it upward, inspecting the unsightly colours painted across the creamy skin of her throat. He half expects her to ignite her blade and run him through on the spot, but to his amazement, she lets him. Pla Ren did this to her and paid with his life. Kylo will kill anyone who ever tries to touch her again... if she doesn’t kill them first. With a defeated sigh, he lifts his other hand to her forehead, fingertips grazing through her hair. The wound above her eyebrow is an angry shade of red, and will scar.

  


“You need bacta.”

  


“I don’t have that luxury,” she grouses stubbornly.

  


He gulps, realising on some level that she has not withdrawn from his uncharacteristically intimate touch. “Wait… please.” Turning away, he tugs open his bedside drawer and unearths a small square packet, peeling it open. And _Force_ , she is still there when he looks back. He was distracted and has loosened his hold on the thread, yet she’s still with him.

  


“It won’t work.”

  


“It will work,” he assures her calmly, lifting his hands once again to her face, brushing back stray tendrils of hair from her brow and carefully applying the patch. He presses it to her skin, smoothing its edges with his thumb. His hands linger there for a moment, fingers idly tracing the hairline across her temples.

  


“I can feel it,” she says, a shade of intrigue in her voice.

  


“Good.”

  


“How is this working?”

  


“I don’t know.”

  


“ ...I don’t have your training staff. It was destroyed,” she confesses, watching guardedly for his reaction.

  


He shrugs. “I have others.”

  


She visibly relaxes, wrinkling her brow. “It feels… better already. Numb, somehow.”

  


Memories of their childish escapade aboard the Finalizer resurface; a small almost-smile curves the corners of his lips. "We're not doing that, now." Rey is thinking of it, too… her thoughts are almost audible.

  


They are silent for several heartbeats, Kylo’s gloved hands framing her cheeks, basking in her soothing, vibrant energy. Only this time, Rey is awake. Aware. She is so achingly lovely like this – radiant and dishevelled, her hair rumpled, pupils swollen. He wonders what would have happened, had he actually confronted her at the temple. Looking at her now… his lifeline… all of his rage and insecurity would have amounted to nothing.

  


She is still staring at him earnestly with those arresting hazel eyes, flecked through with rich mahogany and caramel, like sunlight through whisky. Letting him touch her. He feels his heart gallop into his throat, a sudden rush of blood to his ears at their unanticipated stillness. His fingers ghost across her skin to the sharp angles of her jawline, gently cupping her face, stroking one thumb across her cheekbone. _Mine_ , he thinks, counting the spots peppered across her nose and cheeks, like a constellation of stars. One he has long ago memorised, he realises absently.

  


“What _are_ we doing?” she whispers as his index finger softly traces the shell of her ear.

  


It’s his cue. To stop touching her.

  


But he doesn’t, leather-clad fingertips caressing the cords of her neck, warm even through his gloves, exploring it in a way that is not as clinical as it should be. She shivers as his searching fingers traverse her collarbone, idly stroking the hollow just above it. He cannot tear his eyes away from hers. She smells intoxicating, like lush forests after the Spring rain… like old leather… like the Jakku sun, embedded in her golden skin.

  


“ _Force_ , you’re beautiful,” he mumbles softly.

  


“Ben,” she breathes again, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. It’s not his real name, but the only one he craves and cherishes, coming from _her_. “What… what are we…”

  


Moving his large palm to cradle her cheek, he drinks in every detail of her; her willowy frame, the subtle curves of her body, poorly concealed beneath that oversized tunic, her hands – strong, yet gentle. And her mouth… oh, how he wants to kiss that mouth. But she is the Resistance’s champion, the last of the Jedi Order. His greatest threat. This unassuming, diminutive woman is the one person to have ever defeated him in combat, the only adversary Kylo has ever really been afraid of. She is his only equal in the Force, her light arisen to counter his burgeoning darkness. She _must_ know what he will do to her friends if he has the chance, that one day he will find himself having to follow through with the oath he swore to Skywalker on Crait - to destroy her, and all of it…

  


It doesn’t bear thinking about. The pad of his thumb circles the curve of her lips, exploring their softness. Imagining how they would feel under his tongue, if she would taste as phenomenal as she smells.

  


He leans into her a little. Hesitates.

  


_Tell me to stop._

  


From her perplexed expression, it is as though he had just spoken aloud.

  


_I am your enemy._

  


Rey averts her gaze as he slides one hand into the fall of her hair, tracing soft, lazy circles at the nape of her neck with the other. Her full lips move, silently mouthing his thoughts to herself. _Enemy._ He feels the fine tremors through her shoulders, the heat from her skin, the way she can not bring herself to break free from his touch. He wonders if she dreams of him, as he does of her.

  


Maker be damned. He needs to kiss her now because the Force deigns to bring him to her and... and... because he's just a man, and she's just a woman. Because of her electric, paradigm-shifting touch from across the galaxy so long ago. Because she isn’t running from him now… but raising her trembling hands to his shoulders, slowly, tentatively. As she delicately brushes his cloak, he curses himself for wearing full military regalia – so many layers, it's stupid, really – yearning to feel her touch on his skin.

  


Their height difference has never seemed so enticing. She is still frightened – her pulse hammers rabbit-quick beneath his fingertips as he tilts her head up to him – but she closes her eyes, awaiting his kiss.

  


Rey’s body suddenly jolts and her head snaps to the left, fixating on something he cannot see. The camber of the deck, however, appears to tilt on her side of the connection, her right boot sinking through the floor.

  


“Kriff,” she mutters under her breath, a pained look flitting across her face.

  


Whatever rickety, antiquated shuttle the rebellion has seen fit to provide her with has malfunctioned somehow; either that, or she’s under attack. Kylo releases her begrudgingly, holding up his palms in supplication. She immediately darts away, but turns back after a step or two, her wide eyes searching his apologetically. “Uh… the pitch sensor’s malfunctioning. I adjusted it once after takeoff, but the circuits need rewiring… I’ll need to splice its primary connection to the generator… maybe repurpose a power pack from the cooling unit...” She’s babbling. Nervous.

  


He stifles a groan. “Fix it.”

  


Rey scampers off at once, disappearing through the ceramisteel wall adjoining his quarters and the command centre.

  


After a few moments standing dejectedly alone by his sleeper, Kylo creeps into the adjacent room, curiously scanning his surrounds for her. She is nowhere to be seen. The crimson thread hangs slackly between them; she has severed their connection. He leaves it be. It would be selfish to do otherwise.

  


“Come back to me, Rey,” he begs into the empty command centre, his plaintive words unheard, purposeless.

  


She is nowhere near Tython now; he didn’t feel that characteristic vibration in his gums. He must find her. Their haphazard interludes through the Force will never suffice. Not now. Not for him. Kylo splays gloved hands across his cheeks; her delicious scent still clings to them, and he can almost imagine that it is her fingers tenderly brushing against his face.

  


  


~

  


  


An image gnaws incessantly at the edges of her awareness. It’s the Navigators – they’re trying to communicate. She blocks them out. It’s not the time.

  


“ _Supreme Leader,_ ” Al-Jinn taunts, affecting a faux curtsy before General Hux’s translucent blue hologram.

  


He bristles at her mockery, but something fleeting in his eyes tells her he enjoys the title. “You have deserted your post, _Lady Ren_ ,” he declares. It’s not a question.

  


She bares her teeth at the general and scowls, concealed behind her helmet. “I have not,” she retorts.

  


“Colonel Kaplan reports that your command shuttle departed XV-344H twenty eight standard days ago. You’re lying. Where are you?”

  


Her eyes roam across the sanctuary chamber and its stone effigies of long-deceased Sith lords as she tries to formulate a plausible answer. “I am developing my abilities in the Force,” she asserts obstinately. “To better serve the First Order, General.”

  


“The identification transponders in your Upsilon-class command shuttle indicate you are still in the Esstran sector,” Hux replies evenly. “We can triangulate your exact position, should we so require. Supreme Leader Ren would be most intrigued, I’m sure.”

  


Al-Jinn draws a shaky breath. She had overlooked this. She should have stripped the shuttle or stolen another, she admonishes herself uneasily.

  


Hux narrows his eyes. Nepotism and his lineage dictate that he should rightfully occupy such a high position of authority, but he is a mere mortal, a Force-insensitive megalomaniac. Instead of gaining courage in this knowledge, however, she finds herself crumbling under the intensity of his stare.

  


“Where are you, Al-Jinn?” he snaps.

  


“What’s it to you?” she counters hotly.

  


Hux curls his lip in a sneer. “I have identified a Re -”

  


“Where’s Kylo Ren?” she interrupts.

  


His nostrils flare. “I have assumed command in his absence -”

  


“ _Where is he?!”_

  


“If you must know, our inconstant ruler has disappeared again without notice.” The general scoffs, a barking, humourless sound. “His identification transponders showed that _his_ shuttle was bound for the Deep Core.”

  


She should be relieved, but her breath catches in her throat. Five days ago, there had been another concentric ripple in the Force, but Pla Ren’s demise was foreseeable in a way that Koya’s and Thalaam’s had not been – Al-Jinn had willed it, envisioning herself wrenching away his breath mask in the darkness, and it was so. Had she somehow possessed the Supreme Leader, guiding his murderous hands like a puppet-master? Essence transfer, Master Snoke had lectured the Knights; an ability with which, historically, only a select few masterful Sith lords had been endowed.

  


“Pla Ren,” she mutters to herself.

  


“Say again?”

  


She meets Hux’s steely gaze through the hologram. “Pla Ren. He killed Pla Ren.”

  


The general frowns, cocks his head contemplatively. “Pla Ren,” he repeats. “And Thalaam, and Koya. Half of the Knights are dead.” He focuses on her again. “And you’re hiding,” he concludes with a knowing nod, something close to gratification in his voice.

  


“ _Frack you,_ Hux.”

  


“I have an assignment for you, Al-Jinn. The First Order has located two remote Resistance cells, one on Seregar in the Calaron sector, less than three parsecs from your post.”

  


“How is that of my concern?”

  


“The Conqueror is currently orbiting Seregar’s atmosphere, but without exact coordinates, and in the absence of transmission signals or energy emissions, Grand Admiral Sloane has been unable to pinpoint the location of their base.”

  


“So? They’ve probably relocated. Who gives a shavit?”

  


“I sincerely doubt it. Our intel on the second cell was accurate. The base at Nightbrothers on Dathomir has already been incinerated.” Al-Jinn guesses from Hux’s smug leer that he obtained this intel personally, probably expunged the Resistance base with his own Star Destroyer. “The very last of the rebel vermin is on Seregar. We will wipe their filth from the galaxy.”

  


It’s Kylo Ren, she thinks. He’s drawing her out of hiding. It has to be. “Supreme Leader’s orders?” she questions.

  


Hux’s self-satisfied grin is abhorrent. “ _My_ orders,” he corrects. “You’re close by. Take your shuttle, intercept the Conqueror and… use your Force-wizardry to locate them. They have a Jedi Knight – Supreme Leader Snoke’s murderer. It shouldn’t be too much of an imposition, even for _you._ ”

  


“Skrog off, drukwit.” She reaches to deactivate the holoprojector.

  


“Desertion is not without consequence, _Hera_.” Hux’s blazing eyes seem to penetrate her, his voice laced with vitriol. “Insubordinate vermin.”

  


She scowls, opens her mouth to protest and… the Shrine somehow feeds her the right words. “Weak-willed boy, Armitage,” she seethes quietly. “Thin as a slip of paper, and just as useless.”

  


Hux recoils. His horrified, gape-mouthed image vanishes as she flips the switch. So deliciously fulfilling, to break through the illustrious General’s stony reticence. Hux is weak, naive and vulnerable, as are all mortals oblivious to the currents of dark energy underpinning the cosmos. An unfeeling sociopath, who deserves what he gets.

  


Al-Jinn turns from the holoprojector and immediately slams into the purple curtains of the Navigators’ cloaks behind her. The metallic clinking of plate armour reverberates across the sanctuary chamber as she startles and jumps. She did not perceive their soundless approach, and considers briefly whether Hux observed them in the holoprojection. Beneath their violet hoods, their kohl-black faces are smooth and featureless save for iridescent, circular eyes behind amplification lenses and grotesque toothless, gaping maws, which open and shut noiselessly as they beckon to her with skeletal fingers.

  


_Plink, plink, plink_

  


A thick tarry mixture of black alien ichor and crimson human blood drips from the silhouetted behemoth’s cloak, his saturated hair, his clenched fists and the double blades of his Kyuzo petar. A lake of coppery-scented red liquid blossoms over the floor at an alarming rate about his fresh kill, its butchered remains unrecognisable as alien or human, male or female.

  


_Plink, plink, plink_

  


Severed arms and plates of silver armour are strewn haphazardly across the room, leaving a torso sheathed in a saturated, quilted gambeson with two ghastly cauterised stumps, its abdomen eviscerated, entrails spilled out to one side. Its throat gapes open, carotid arteries still weakly spurting the last precious reservoir of lifeblood onto its chest. The face is unidentifiable beneath a speckled mask of its own gore, partially skinned and disfigured with deep gashes, one eye enucleated, the remaining verdant green eye fixed in a vacant, sightless stare. Its hair is blood-soaked and caked with clot in places where the victim has not been scalped.

  


_Plink, plink, plink_

  


She will die.

  


If she stays here, she will die. The Supreme Leader will hunt her and slay her like a game animal.

  


She slowly turns back from the alien Navigators and reaches with a quivering gauntlet to reactivate the holoprojector, trembling uncontrollably, her heart hammering through her chest. It is exactly as she had feared. She has forgotten how to breathe.

  


As the uniformed general’s ice-blue visage once again flickers to life, still in a rigid at-ease stance on the primary command bridge, Al-Jinn reaches to her jawline and lifts away her helmet with a faint _hiss_. Her teeth rattle; her panicked, emerald-green eyes oscillate about frantically, thoughts racing. The General and Sloane have a history, although she knows not what. She must chance that Grand Admiral Sloane will follow Hux’s orders before Kylo Ren’s. A chance she will be forced to take if she is to avoid the grisly fate that the Navigators have shown her.

  


Hux affords her a withering glance, but does not speak.

  


“I’ll do it, General,” she volunteers, a fraction too enthusiastically, her voice too shrill. “Send me the coordinates.”

  


General Hux quirks a curious eyebrow. “Change of heart, Al-Jinn?”

  


Anything, anything other than this. The Navigators have never been mistaken. “There… there’s a Force-sensitive in the Calaron sector. I’ve… felt her. I can find her.” She needs… she needs… she needs air. Bile rises thickly in her throat. Her vision is swimming, a creeping numbness circling her mouth.

  


“The Jedi,” Hux spits.

  


“Yes, the Jedi. B–b-but one condition, General. After the rebel base is destroyed, I stay with Sloane and the Conqueror for as long as I see fit.”

  


“Scared, Hera?” He smirks.

  


Al-Jinn clenches her eyes shut. She cannot control the quavering in her voice, the blood running like ice through her veins, pulse thudding in her ears, nor can she look that slimy sycophant in the eye – not like this. She can’t stomach his sick amusement.

  


She hears his throaty chuckle. “Very well, then. Set your coordinates for Seregar. The battlecruiser will be easily locatable on your radar as you approach. Rendezvous within twenty four standard hours, and all will be as you wish.”

  


“Yes, G- General,” she stammers.

  


“I will inform Grand Admiral Sloane of your imminent arrival, and that you shall remain as a guest aboard her ship.” He reaches for something and his image disappears.

  


He seems well aware now that he has the upper hand. Al-Jinn prays that Hux does not fully comprehend the exigency of her predicament, lest he exploit her further. She needs the helmet again. She can’t breathe easily, can’t see straight without it. Wrenching it back into place with violently trembling hands, she is once again shrouded in darkness, the way she likes it. The world is more focused, more palatable through the vertical slits of her visor, and she feels familiar torrents of dark energy reverberate inside of her. She hopes desperately for that strength to persevere once she has abandoned her fugacious sanctuary.

  


  


~

  


  


Zone One: the head. Kylo raises his amethyst lightsaber overhead and brings it crashing down onto the phrikite training dummy in a vertical strike.

  


Zone Two: the right arm, right side. He spins the blade through a perfect circle about his gloved hand and ploughs it into the figure in a backhanded horizontal cut.

  


He detests training in such confined quarters, necessitating perfect precision and care to avoid irreparably damaging the shuttle. Anything from the Finalizer’s sparring gym would be preferable to this, even a battle droid.

  


Zone Three: left arm, left side. He grasps the hilt two-handed, pirouettes with it held high to build momentum then swipes at his artificial opponent, driving the plasma beam into its left chest wall. The dummy rocks under the power of his blow.

  


He has energy to burn. The saber katas and isometric exercises the ‘troopers utilise to maintain physical fitness during prolonged missions have not satiated his need to fight, to spar, to destroy something.

  


Zone Four: the back. He lunges into the dummy, deflecting an imagined attack with his left arm while curving the right behind it as if for a one-armed embrace, landing the length of his blade on target. Instinctively retreating a step as the figure pitches forward, he drives a second upward thrust into its head for good measure.

  


He can take whatever he wants, and the Supreme Leader always gets what he wants.

  


Zone Five is the right leg and Zone Six is the left leg. He had patiently instructed Rey to counter these attacks with a drop parry, refining her footwork and grip technique during their first and only sparring session. His current inanimate opponent, of course, has no defence. He raises the blade over his right shoulder, swiping it diagonally in a brutal downward cut. The impact almost dislodges it from its wide base. Without missing a beat, he propels his right boot into where its solar plexus would be, smashing it backwards, deftly twisting the saber between them and slicing into its left leg in a reverse downward cut.

  


Untrained, she is as strong as he is. How extraordinary it would be to teach her the saber forms, to have her master them all and surpass him… He won’t brood over what she discovered on Tython, or that in twenty four standard hours, she has not returned to him. Not that he’s counting. The cosmic energy tethering them together tells him that she is alive and well, despite whatever malady compelled her to disappear yesterday.

  


Kylo leaps over the phrikite figure in an aerial forward somersault, too vigorously, boots narrowly scraping the ceiling. He lands at its back, readying his lightsaber for another head chop.

  


Because he is a sentimental fool. He has compassion for her. Snoke was precisely correct – she’s his weakness. His nemesis. Because just the cursed sound of her voice… does things to him.

  


He cries out and rains a savage barrage of blows into the dummy, the force of impact reverberating painfully through the weapon back into his wrists. He doesn’t stop, cycling through the zones, starting again, faster, more precise, more fierce.

  


With the command shuttle temporarily on autopilot for an uneventful course back to the Harbinger, Mitaka rises from the pilot’s chair, stretches his legs and wanders through the command centre en route to his minuscule crew’s quarters. He does not observe Kylo Ren training with a phrikite dummy; he merely sees an orb of fiery purple luminescence as one attack blurs seamlessly into the next, any human figure indiscernible amongst it all. The intense currents of rage pulsing from the sphere of light, however, make him feel suddenly ill. Lieutenant Mitaka knows nothing of the Force, but as a sentient being, he cannot help but be affected by it.

  


  


~

  


  


Sunset paints the cloudless Seregar sky in vibrant shades of coral and titian, melding into a rich ultramarine as it meets the horizon. The sinking sun burns with a blinding exquisiteness, like a lodestar through the tangled heads of the trees, filtering through with silken warmth. Leia shields her eyes, enjoying the last rays of the day’s lustrous light, the heat and humidity pressing on her skin. The lush, floral fragrance of the jungle mixes with the loamy must of rotting logs. She hears the distant roar of a waterfall surging and plunging over a rocky outcrop, a symphony of insects chirruping and birdsong from every direction, rustling foliage and crunching twigs as larger creatures shamble through the dense undergrowth.

  


Earlier, she ventured out alone, following a moss-veiled trail into the shady glades, meandering between fingers of light that spilled into spaces between the vast canopy of leaves. Each sprawling tree she passed beneath reminded her of a watchful guardian, a silent sentinel of the groves. The jungle is a glorious assault on all the senses.

  


Without Poe or the others to worry and fuss over her, Leia was free to explore at her leisure, resting briefly as she needed against fallen logs with vines spilling across them like snakes. She gathered dried branches and twigs from the forest floor, slowly and steadily dragging them back to the fire pit they have dug just beyond where the man-made clearing for the tolium refinery gives way to boundless jungle.

  


Now, she sits comfortably before a crackling fire – not strictly necessary in this cloying humidity, but it keeps the msquitos at bay and brings comfort, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of Tarine tea. The last of the Resistance army has been deployed to neighbouring planets on supply runs. Leia laughed off Poe’s concern at how short of breath she became from merely trudging out to their makeshift hangar to farewell their comrades. He insisted on at least two of their newest recruits remaining behind to assist her and would not be persuaded otherwise. Shortly following their departure, Leia “remembered” their requirements for bulk portion-packs and water purification powder and promptly sent her sanguine attendants – crestfallen at their exclusion from the mission – on an urgent quest to Storrd Township to bargain for goods. Both men were only too eager to oblige. They will be gone for at least three standard days.

  


In the absence of her battalion, Leia is temporarily, blessedly free from her responsibilities as General, and can be alone with her thoughts.

  


Poe Dameron will make a fine General.

  


Rey is returning from her tumultuous journey; her Force signature draws steadily closer, though still many systems away. The young woman from the holy shrine has finally acknowledged Leia’s presence and is now actually journeying to Seregar. She is afraid of Kylo Ren, Leia senses, but all who seek sanctuary from the First Order are welcome with the Resistance. She awaits her arrival with great anticipation.

  


As the sun sinks over the horizon, the brilliant palate of colour overhead gives way to a deep indigo night sky speckled with a dazzling array of stars. The fluty piping of a songbird emerges from the forest glade along with new sounds: the rumbling growls and footfalls of nocturnal predators stalking their hunting ground. Ravenbeasts are out there somewhere, a carnivorous species unique to Seregar according to her datapad, but Leia is curious rather than apprehensive. Her blaster – not that she will need it – is stored securely at her back, in the tie of her coat.

  


The stars, like lucid snowflakes of silver glittering in the twilight, are a memoir of Leia’s long life, each imbued with significance and precious memories. _There_ , Tatooine, where her twin brother was raised and began his Jedi training with Obi-Wan, setting his feet upon a path that led him back to her. _There_ , Lothal, where she united with the Ghost’s crew and encountered her first ever Jedi Knight, Ezra Bridger. _There_ , the ice planet Hoth, where she finally realised she was in love with the cocky smuggler whose alliance with the Rebellion was purely coincidental. And _there_ , Chandrila, where their son was born on the day that marked the end of the Galactic Civil War. It’s a mystifying concept, that the light she perceives now predates these very events. Every pinpoint of light signifies a milestone, a personal connection, an evocation in the winding road of her fate.

  


It is magnificent.

  


She sips her tea, revelling in the peace and tranquillity of her surrounds. A beautiful planet, she thinks, its jungles and wildlife reclaiming ownership where humankind stripped its mineral resources and abandoned the land. She can sleep under the stars tonight, if she chooses.

  


A new star winks into existence overhead. No, she reconsiders – its edges are too well-defined, too artificial – a perfect isosceles triangle. And much too close to planetfall to be there where, seconds ago, there was empty space. It’s –

  


A Resurgent-class Star Destroyer.

  


Leia tightens her grip on her mug. Why has the comm/scan not alerted her? _Ah_ , it is unmanned… and no spacecraft remain for escape. Nor does she stand a chance of outrunning any form of attack. She barely had the stamina to haul the firewood. She should be panicking, but instead feels a kind of resigned hopelessness.

  


She is tired. So very tired.

  


“ _Leia.”_

  


Ben isn’t aboard the battlecruiser; she can’t sense his presence there.

  


“Leia.” Luke’s serene, lilting voice calls her again.

  


She tears her frantic gaze away from the warship. Her brother’s diaphanous phantasm stands beside her, lovingly smiling down.

  


“They’re here, Luke,” she mutters despondently.

  


“It doesn’t matter,” he replies, stooping to lightly kiss her forehead. His incandescent, blue-green hands – _both_ human hands, in this manifestation of him – envelop her shoulders, and this time she can genui nely feel their warmth. “It’s all right.”

  


Somehow, he’s right. Hadn’t General Organa Solo deployed her entire army off-world, safe from harm, anticipating tonight?

  


“The First Order has found us,” she says, her tone defeated.

  


“No, Leia. Not _us_ – the others are safe. And when they strike you down, you shall become more powerful than they can possibly imagine.”

  


Leia leans back into him, covering one of his hands with her own. Han’s gemstone promise band reflects the flickering firelight.

  


“Leia – it’s time.”

  


She relaxes against him, feeling her heartbeat slow. They have discussed this before during their secret interludes together, many times, as her physical body waned and she grew stronger with the Force, more connected. Someday, inevitably, the time would come – she knew this with unerring certainty.

  


"Will I be with you, Luke?"

  


"Yes. You will be with me." He enfolds her in a familiar, snug embrace.

  


"Just hold me for a minute. Please."

  


Luke obliges, and they sit together quietly for a long moment. Leia feels her twin's otherworldly serenity spreading through her, a radiant light from her core that suffuses her entire being. She senses her son somewhere far across the galaxy, whispers words of forgiveness, things she should have said a lifetime ago, hoping against hope that he hears her this one last time.

  


"Close your eyes, Leia. The Force is with us, always."

  


Leia shuts her eyes, contented and peaceful in her brother's arms. She feels the Force ebb and flow – a living, breathing undercurrent binding all lifeforms across the expansive jungle and beyond, the entire planet, the whole unbounded cosmos... and gives herself over to it, becoming everything and nothing, all at once.

  


Han awaits her once again, inviting her with arms outstretched, irresistible and as young and roguishly charming as she remembers from Hoth. A fiendish grin lights up his ruggedly handsome face as he sees her. "You like me because I'm a scoundrel, princess," he declares, laughing smugly. "There aren't enough scoundrels in your life."

  


She slaps his chest playfully. "I happen to like _nice men_."

  


"I'm a nice man."

  


Just like when she first kissed him on the Falcon. "No you're not," she argues. Only this time, she tumbles into his warm embrace, burying her face in his chest, feeling his arms come tight around her. She is overjoyed.

  


Somewhere far away in another realm, Leia is bathed in blinding rose-coloured light then engulfed in flames.

  


"I love you," she whispers.

  


She hears and feels the rumble in his chest as he chuckles. "I know."

  


  


~

 

  


_I forgive you, my son. I love you._

  


The steady, serene voice of the Leader of the Resistance - the enemy - and for a brief moment he actually sees Leia’s eyes, so much like his own.

  


With a jolt, he feels a ripping in the Force, but one unlike any other he has previously experienced. Like crashing head-on into a landspeeder. Kylo staggers backward under its weight, gasping for breath as though a gaping hole has been torn in his chest. His legs buckle underneath him and he stumbles, crashing heavily onto his back on the deck. The impact does not dissipate and fade, like the Knights’ deaths – it stays with him, clawing at his throat, an electric pain that stings and screams in the pit of his stomach.

  


He lies on the deck, staring up at the command centre’s ceiling, trying frantically to ignore the shrieking in his head and comprehend what has caused this. It won’t stop. Oh, _Maker_ , it won’t stop. The air has been stolen from his lungs. A biting, gelid sensation envelops him, as if he is falling into a deep, dark chasm with no light or warmth anywhere around.

  


What has happened? Even when the Hosnian Cataclysm extinguished billions of lives – he felt their panic, their anguished screams, then nothing – it wasn’t like _this_. The jagged void left behind in the Force, no matter how massive, always replenishes itself, re-establishing equilibrium. But he still feels hollow, sickened, and it is too much to bear.

  


_my son_

  


Gripping the stool, the edge of the holotank, anything onto which his gloved hands can gain purchase, he wobbles unsteadily to his feet and staggers into the cockpit.

  


“What happened?!” he demands to Mitaka, clutching the bulkhead door frame to keep him upright, hands trembling wildly. The brilliant aquamarine aurora of hyperspace through the cockpit viewport seems to pulsate and distort, and while transcending lightspeed is as natural to him as breathing – whether as pilot or passenger – he struggles not to expunge the proteinloaf he choked down hours ago all over the deck.

  


Without question, the Lieutenant scans the control panel with well-practised efficiency, systematically tapping a finger over each flight instrument in succession. “No faults to report, Supreme Leader,” he recites. “All systems secure. No craft within scanning range. Laser cannons armed. On course to the Harbinger, ETA –“

  


“G – get General Hux,” Kylo interrupts, hating the deep strangled sound of his own voice. He nods toward the holoprojector by the pilot’s chair. His left eye has begun its flickering, twitching dance and his jaw clenches and unclenches repeatedly.

  


Minutes later, the General’s translucent image, standing rigidly at attention, shimmers over the HoloNet. Hux lours at the Supreme Leader through the hologram, making little effort to conceal his irritation, but there is something intangible in his cold stare – guilt? Apprehension? … _Pride?_

  


“Supreme Leader,” he greets.

  


“What have you done?” Kylo murmurs quietly.

  


Hux ignores the question. "You need to discipline your Knight, Lord Ren."

  


Kylo can only stare blankly at the hologram and take deep, gulping breaths. He grinds his teeth, chewing the inside of his lip until he tastes blood.

  


"She deserted her post." Oblivious to how rattled his ruler appears, Hux stands tall and self-important, like a vratixan blood eagle preening its feathers.

  


No answer. The silence hangs heavily between them.

  


"Al-Jinn," he adds.

  


Kylo frowns, struggling to remember whom Hux is accusing through the thick fog that has enveloped his mind. _I forgive you, my son._

  


"She has been reassigned, Supreme Leader. We identified two remote Resistance bases in the Outer Rim Territories. Both have now been extinguished. From orbit, no less." He simpers pompously, smoothing the collar of his black coat.

  


"You identified two..." Kylo parrots, distractedly trailing off.

  


The general's mouth is moving, but his words are muffled and somewhere far away. "In your... _unforeseen_ prolonged absence, Supreme Leader, I took the liberty of questioning the prisoners from Rakata Prime myself. Of course, they were given two standard days of basic treatment, as per your orders..."

  


_my son_

  


"Impudent scum, all three of them. The usual fare, breaking their fingers, did not make them talk."

  


"Breaking their..." Kylo’s words dissolve uselessly into the mental haze.

  


"But kneecapping them in front of their comrades? That was certainly more... conducive. Fickle little muckrats, the Resistance vermin. So very loyal to their fellow soldiers, even to the detriment of their cause. Now, _there_ we made progress." His eyes shine with satisfaction. "Dathomir and Seregar." He expects commendation, Kylo realises insensibly.

  


_Seregar_

  


_I forgive you, my son._

  


"What have you done?" he whispers again, exhaling a shaky, uneven breath.

  


"Your capricious traitor of a Knight aided Grand Admiral Sloane to pinpoint and obliterate the rebel filth's little base on Seregar. My only regret is that I could not discharge the turbolaser cannons myself."

  


Kylo's hands are shaking, his face slack, breath caught between his lungs. He could have stopped this. He _should_ have stopped this. Is he not the Supreme Leader of the First Order? Was he not with the prisoners and their vicious captors just days ago? Months before, he had argued to the First Order Council that the Resistance was no longer worth hunting, their army reduced to a few measly escape pods during the Supremacy's pursuit across the galaxy and further massacred on Crait, their leader's fruitless call-to-arms intercepted and terminated before reinforcements could be summoned... if anyone even cared. General Hux, however, had insisted, and while the Supreme ruler's edict was always final, Kylo allowed him that trifle. Allowed him a lot of things, actually. How had he overlooked that... that the woman whose flagship he could not convince himself to fire upon, whose sorrowful eyes had locked onto his through the Force as he reluctantly released his thumbs from the triggers, would still be out there, staunchly commanding her paltry brigade, the First Order's most prized target?

  


He knew that LeHuse's laserfire had not killed her, even if it shattered the primary command bridge and eradicated all of its other occupants. He has... _felt_ her, skirting the edges of his consciousness. Easily ignored, but each time stronger, more forceful.

  


"The... the prisoners?" His words are weak, tremulous. He rakes his fingers shakily through his hair.

  


Hux snorts. "Dead."

  


"Cut the connection," he mumbles to Mitaka.

  


The general's holographic image scowls suspiciously. "Supreme Leader? Do you read me? The Resistance is no more! I have ended it! The First Order reigns sup -"  
  


_"Cut it!"_ Kylo roars. Mitaka obeys.

  


_I forgive_

  


The dark lord pivots on his heel and lurches clumsily back into his quarters, slamming and bolting the bulkhead door behind him. Stripping off his black leather gloves, he examines the small crescents his fingernails have dug into his flesh where he gripped his palms so tightly to silence his screams

  


_I forgive you, my son._

  


and sinks down beside the sleeper as all his strength drains away, drawing his knees into his chest and wrapping his arms tightly around them, staring numbly ahead. His fingertips spark and crackle; he barely notices.

  


  


~

  


  


Hours later, after the pilots' scheduled shift-change, Lieutenant Stridan receives the order to reroute the command shuttle's course for the planet Seregar. The trip will span nine standard days with one stop to refuel – much longer, were it not for the Supreme Leader's express instruction that they navigate through the widely-known, treacherous Gam Tim’nisi asteroid belt en route to shorten the journey, and insistence that he will pilot the shuttle himself if necessary. Something is awry. The deep, commanding bark to which the Lieutenant is so well-accustomed from the dark lord has a disturbingly choked, guttural quality, his breathing is harsh and laboured, and he turns his face away before his subordinate can acknowledge the order. Stridan, as always, accepts this without question.

  


"Are you in need of a medical droid, my lord?" he offers tentatively, but Kylo Ren is already gone.

  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 12 will also be one of mine.


	12. Rd1 Nb6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.

 

 

The alien Navigators understand that the future is not predetermined. Their premonitions are a gift, a window of opportunity for salvation. Their destinies are presently entwined with one earmarked for slaughter, and once again, they must disentangle themselves to survive.

 

When Al-Jinn Ren alighted her command shuttle and stormed away out of sight with the dark-skinned female officer and her entourage, her crew lingered aboard, disregarded and forgotten. Moments later, the same shuttle vacated the Conqueror's third hangar with just two occupants, destined for somewhere deep in the Unknown Regions from whence they came. Their departure was not without regret. They enjoyed the quietude of the Shrine of Kooroo.

 

 

~

 

 

The journey from the Mid Rim to Seregar drags on and on. Kylo spends more time than he would ever admit to himself fixated blankly on the star map over the holotank, or impatiently, obsessively tracking their course, calculating and recalculating shorter potential routes, or staring at his chronometer as seconds crawl into minutes, endless hours bleed into days. He is unmoored in time and space. The topography of the cosmic energy web has permanently shifted, like the tectonic plates of a planet grinding across each other, leaving him with the absolute knowledge that the void left by one so omnipotent in the Force will never be filled. It is unlike Snoke’s death, when the incessant malign drawl in his head was abruptly silenced; it’s a numbness, a dissociation from the world around him.

 

Their voyage would have spanned twenty standard days without shortcutting through the most direct route, although he senses his pilots consider him reckless and overhasty for the inherent risk. Even a nine-day journey is almost intolerable. It’s the waiting, the not knowing, that eats at him.

 

Lieutenant Stridan ploughed the command shuttle into the perilous, changeable Gam Tim’nisi asteroid belt without qualm, following orders as always, but the chorus of warning alarms wailing through the cockpit within minutes reduced him to an anxious wreck. Determined not to alert the Supreme Leader to his incompetence, the officer instead woke his relief pilot for assistance. As Kylo felt the shuttle begin to twist and lurch, barely registering the faraway screeching of alarms, he drifted to the cockpit to find two panic-stricken men madly hollering orders and wrestling each other for the control yoke.

 

A perfunctory wave of his hand silenced them both. He stole all conscious thought from their minds with the Force, impassively watched their fickle bodies collapse onto the deck, and left all their fates to chance as he carried each back to their tiny quarters.

 

Navigating an asteroid field, it turns out, is easy when one does not care whether they live or die.

 

After three standard days without sleep, he feels so far removed from reality already that he does not acknowledge the two other lives hinging on his piloting expertise. In years past, he has manoeuvred various shuttles, his TIE silencer, even the Millennium Falcon once, through much worse conditions, and in his addled, sleep-deprived state, it feels closer to a routine flight simulation training program than a genuine hazard as he ducks and weaves the transporter between soaring rocks and debris.

 

The shuttle emerges on the far side of the asteroid field, not unscathed, but serviceable. It will last the remaining distance through the Outer Rim Territories. Stridan and Mitaka will awaken to a dull pain behind their eyes that will quickly fade, amnestic to the entire journey.

 

Over the first five days of their voyage, after Kylo rerouted their course, he slept for perhaps ten or twelve hours in total – blindsided each time he woke by a wave of sorrow crashing in, the horrible situation clicking in his mind – that his mother is dead.

 

He prays to the stars, to the Force, to the Maker, that he is wrong.

 

So he doesn’t sleep. He feels sick to the stomach, like he will never be able to eat again; the thought of proteinloaf makes his insides churn. The ‘fresher’s small sonic shower offers no comfort. The beginnings of stubble prickle at his chin. He gulps down caf like a fiend, pacing the command centre in endless circles like a caged animal, frantically scouring three-dimensional maps of the galaxy over the holotank and reams of reports on his datapad, hunting for material that will prove he is mistaken. There is no concrete evidence of his worst fears. He must see for himself.

 

Besides, the First Order army eliminates Force-sensitives so often, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that another with extraordinary potential has been killed. Perhaps that is what he senses? Or Pla Ren – could it be a delayed reaction? The Kel Dor was probably resident at the temple’s remains when Rey encountered him. Could such a place of power have amplified his presence in the Force? The Supreme Leader cannot personally account for every sentient being in the galaxy. It isn’t inconceivable that there was some other masterful Jedi or Sith that he has overlooked. Not Rey – he still feels her somewhere, remotely. Black Sun’s mercenaries, maybe?

 

He tells himself these things. The constant feeling of free-falling, plummeting into the unforgiving vastness of space, however, tells him otherwise.

 

General Hux reports daily. He has temporarily assumed leadership in Kylo’s absence and is focusing the First Order’s efforts on warship and weapons manufacture at the Star Forge and Geonosian Industries. Productivity is already spiking. The First Order Navy will treble its fleet within a year, he boasts. Scouts have been deployed to a number of as-yet uninhabited mobile ice planets and moons throughout the Unknown Regions, investigating them as potential sites for the construction of a second Starkiller Base. ‘The weapon that will bring harmony to the galaxy’, he proudly calls it. Kylo listens to his words but is unable to make sense of them, as if hearing them from underwater. Not understanding at all.

 

On the eighth day, rooted to the pilot’s chair while Stridan and Mitaka lay on their cots in a Force-induced slumber, Kylo summons the most powerful Sith he knows over the HoloNet. Just in case.

 

 

~

 

 

“Hail, Supreme Leader,” Kopecz addresses him, the profound basso resonating through the cockpit. His inordinately tall, cloaked form immediately sinks to one knee, humbling himself in a bow.

 

Kylo can’t speak. The uncomfortable hush stretches out for so long that the Twi’lek draws back the hood of his black cloak with robotic fingers, regarding him through the hologram with a particular intensity. He slowly raises the tip of his right lek in greeting.

 

“ _Nerra_ ,” he says gently, and Kylo is suddenly struggling not to cry.

 

“K - Kopecz,” he manages.

 

The Knight’s pale eyes are wide and full of concern. Kylo is grateful that he cannot invade his thoughts through the HoloNet – he has certainly tried this himself, many times. “How may I serve you, my lord?”

 

He glowers at his boots. “How strong are you in the dark side of the Force?” he mumbles sullenly, not trusting himself to make eye contact.

 

There is a pregnant pause. The blue hologram shifts in his peripheral vision, but does not answer.

 

“Can you… resurrect?” Kylo grinds out.

 

He realises the folly of his words the instant they escape his lips.

 

Another pause. Then, he hears Kopecz’s voice, low, cautious. “Who did you kill?”

 

Silence. Kylo counts his unsteady breaths.

 

“Pla Nel?” Kopecz coaxes softly.

 

He swallows against the vise constricting his throat. “The leader of the Resistance.”

 

The Knight hesitates for a long moment. Kylo hazards a glance at his image. “ _Numa_ Skywalker,” Kopecz replies contemplatively, frowning.

 

“Yes.”

 

“…your mother.”

 

Kylo doesn’t answer, but shuts his eyes tight, desperately choking back tears.

 

“ _Nobra edgra,_ _n_ _erra_.” The Knight waits for a response, receiving none. “ _Tum, wasnawa uba_.”

 

“You don’t know that,” Kylo mutters.

 

“I felt it too, sire. And I _do_ know that. I know _you_.”

 

“I could have stopped it,” he confesses under his breath. The blue Twi’lek’s features hold nothing but calm compassion and solicitude, the same face a much younger Ben always turned to at the Jedi Temple when he sought reassurance and direction. It is too easy to slip back into old roles, beseeching Kopecz for his help, as if it will change anything; if he could just take it all back, rescind all of his unconscionable mistakes.

 

“Are you certain that it was her?”

 

“N – no.”

 

“What do your feelings tell you?”

 

Kylo can only stare mutely at the deck. _That my mother’s blood is on my hands as much as my father’s_ , he thinks.

 

The Knight sighs regretfully. “I do not possess such strength, sire. _Nobra edgra_. Not yet. The only Sith practitioners in history to have mastered midi-chlorian manipulation to that extent were Darth Tenebrous and Darth Plagueis.”

 

The dark lord nods miserably, fixating on his feet.

 

“If any among the Knights of Ren could command such power, my lord, it would be you.”

 

Kylo shakes his head. “I can’t,” he murmurs.

 

Kopecz draws himself up to full height, his lekku weaving across each other in an unseen message. His deep baritone voice is hushed. “…but you intend to try.”

 

“I can’t do it,” Kylo repeats dispassionately, knowing that he will indeed try, if it comes to that.

 

The silence hangs between them for a long moment. Then, “Ben, every day I attempt, and every day, I fail. Should you succeed in this… please…”

 

Kylo finally meets his old friend’s hard stare with red-rimmed eyes, wonders if he looks as dead as he feels. “Of course.”

 

“Strength to you, my brother. May the Force be with you.” Kopecz taps his fisted mechanical hand twice to his heart, then extends it out towards Kylo. A gesture they invented together nearly twenty solar cycles ago, something that is uniquely theirs.

 

“ _Waba jafasua fuji ji awadna,_ _n_ _erra_.” Kylo mirrors the movement weakly.

 

“ _Ma-allesh_ , Ben. I will see you again.” The Knight dips the tip of his left lek.

 

Kylo deactivates the holoprojector feeling emptier than before. If he could curl in on himself and hide forever, he would. Killing Snoke is perhaps the only thing in his life that he does not regret.

 

 

~

 

 

Colonel Datoo invites Kylo Ren and his crew aboard the Conqueror, currently cruising between Baroonda and F’tral in the Calaron Sector. Lieutenant Stridan will not present Lord Ren with problems – the command shuttle’s fuel supplies are perilously low and its left wing tip is damaged, causing the craft to veer off-course unless he overcompensates with steering. Having risen from a Force-induced slumber with zero recollection of their journey to date, the pilot holds himself accountable for both maladies. He has been negligent, somehow.

 

How fortuitous for him to have located a nearby Star Destroyer on the orbital long range scanner, moreso that its captain and first officer would be most honoured to accommodate the Supreme Leader, offering repairs, refuelling and anything he desires. Incidentally, Datoo reports, the battlecruiser destroyed an abandoned rebel base just nine days ago on express orders from two members of the First Order Council, General Hux and one of the Knights of Ren.

 

The dark lord does not throttle Stridan with his notorious invisible grip when he confesses these faults, as he had feared. Kylo Ren is indifferent to the status of the shuttle. Make planetfall. Find the base. Land the ship. His displeasure only bubbles to the surface when the pilot suggests undecidedly that their craft ought to take priority over their dubious mission. The Lieutenant hastens to the cockpit and radios Datoo again, requesting the coordinates of the blast site.

 

Stridan has witnessed the devastating firepower of the First Order’s weaponry before – entire planets reduced to dust by the phantom energy beam of Starkiller Base’s superweapon – but never an explosion crater as expansive as the one that grows steadily larger through the viewport as they approach Seregar’s crust. It appears as a gargantuan blackened, bowl-shaped depression with a raised rim, its diameter perhaps one-half the length of a Star Destroyer. For many klicks beyond its circumference, the blast wave has flattened the surrounding jungle. An awe-inspiring demonstration of a turbolaser cannon’s destructive potential, that in one unspeakable second its violent explosive power could reduce an enemy battalion to this.

 

 

~

 

 

Coming here was a mistake. There is no closure here, nothing but an enormous inky chasm, an echoing black void that rushes over him as he trudges sluggishly down the boarding ramp. The overwhelming stench of sour ash and destruction hits him immediately – it’s over his mouth, inside his throat, under his tongue, everywhere. The explosion site and surrounds are entirely bereft of living things – a vibrant green jungle, once teeming with life, now completely destroyed by a leading shock front of compressed gases, debris and fire. Overlying the crater’s rim, the terra firma glistens with pearly grey-green silica glass where the sand has transmuted from the searing heat of laserfire. The air feels rarefied and suffocatingly heavy at the same time.

 

This is not Kylo Ren. This is a pale imitation, a cheap sham. His head pounds. He presses the heels of his gloved palms into his eye sockets, trying to stave off the dull, pulsating pain swelling his skull, a deafening cacophony bouncing around in the corners of his mind. One of his pilots – their name escapes him – asks what he wants to do, if he’s found what he was looking for, but he can’t form words, collect his thoughts, rationalise his decisions. Stay with the ship, he commands vacuously. He disembarks the shuttle, lumbering like the living dead, and begins to pace toward the perimeter of the blast crater.

 

Shadowy circles droop beneath his dark eyes. The dissociative fugue that enveloped Kylo for the first few miserable months of his leadership beckons him again; it would be so wonderfully effortless to ease back into it, like slipping into a warm bath.

 

Eyes downcast, he lurches unsteadily from foot to foot just beyond the lip of the crater, ink-black cloak swirling behind him in the gentle breeze, uncertain of what he seeks. Some vestige of Leia Organa Solo… evidence to dispel his doubts. Beads of perspiration prickle at his forehead and cheeks. It is muggy and oppressive here. The friable earth is littered with fragments of metal, debris charred beyond recognition and clumps of silica glass. No signs of human habitation. From the cockpit’s viewport as they approached, he estimated the crater to be just over one klick in diameter - surely a military base would have been more expansive? Parade grounds, firing ranges, fieldcraft sites, hangars and such? Is this the pitiful reality of Hux’s perceived threat?

 

Last light is fast approaching as he forces himself to pick up the pace, tramping the perimeter, black boots kicking aside scorched pieces of wreckage and detritus. He knows the appearance of carbonised human bones all too well – from years of hoarding the ashes of his most formidable adversaries, at Snoke’s insistence – but there is nothing. Dusk colours the horizon in rich hues of lavender and ultramarine, the first of the evening’s sequin-silver stars like the scattering embers of a dying fire winking into existence overhead. Kylo cannot remember when he last beheld a sunset in person, or lay under the stars. Even in his childhood on Chandrila and Corellia and Coruscant, the setting sun was always obscured by towering duracrete skyscrapers and the acrid smog and pollution that hung in the air above the metropolis. He has only seen this kind of dazzling, idyllic clarity in holovids.

 

His mother would have loved it here.

 

At the farthest point of the crater from the command shuttle, Kylo comes to a standstill, withdrawing the comlink from his trouser pocket. If everything is really lost, he can at least afford Rey this small mercy. He’s barely lucid, but he must do this while he still has some semblance of self-restraint; looking upon that bloodthirsty sithspit’s face, however, will send him flying into an intractable rage. Kylo will expunge that insubordinate, egomaniacal parasite from the First Order – from the known universe – personally, when the time comes. Frack the consequences.

 

“What is it, Ren?” Hux’s voice is clipped.

 

He draws a deep, fetid breath. “You have succeeded, General Hux. The Resistance is dead.”

 

“Why are you in the Seregar System?”

 

“Assessment and clean-up.” The signal is weak and compromised by static interference, but he carefully keeps any inflection from his voice.

 

“I assure you, Supreme Leader, Grand Admiral Sloane has –“

 

“I had to be sure,” Kylo interrupts.

 

The only response is crackling static.

 

“That Supreme Leader Snoke’s killer got what she deserved.” He swallows thickly. “I had to see for myself that our master has been avenged.”

 

“ _Ah_. Of course.”

 

“You have exceeded my expectations, General. The First Order reigns supreme at last.” It sickens him to do this.

 

“As it should, Lord Ren.”

 

“You will rescind the bounties on their heads. They are all dead.” He appeals to Hux’s venality. “The First Order will neither encourage nor reward fakery.”

 

“Very good, Ren. I will notify the Hutts immediately.” The general pauses. “When might we anticipate your return?”

 

“Soon.”

 

Kylo shuts off the comlink, hurls it furiously to the scorched ground and grinds the heel of his boot into it, only succeeding in partially burying it. A subtle flick of his wrist splinters the device into a million fragments with the Force. Now encased in darkness save for the starlight, he continues his dispirited route about the blast zone.

 

 

~

 

 

He discovers the ring by accident.

 

Stumbling over a loose patch of sand in the shadowy twilight, the clumsiness that accompanies extreme sleep deprivation sends him pitching sideways into the ashen earth, his hand-held white glowrod rolling from his grasp as he strikes the ground. The light source illuminates something shiny and buckled in the sand. Kylo carefully palms it as he retrieves the glowrod, rolling onto his stomach to inspect his prize.

 

The pearly gemstone, still in its golden setting, refracts the artificial light in a rainbow of striking colour across its charred surface. Despite the tarnished, misshapen metal of the ring itself, its significance is unmistakeable.

 

It was his mother’s promise ring.

 

Because his mother is dead.

 

 

~

 

 

He stills, kneeling somberly by the crater with Leia’s ring clasped tightly in his gloved fingers, like a worshipper before the pulpit. The sultry, stifling atmosphere seems cage him; his hair is sweat-soaked and plastered to his neck, his face running with perspiration, yet he feels frozen to the core. Something is pulling him under and he is about to give in. He fights the vestiges of tears prickling at the back of his eyes, the subdued but constant thrum of a headache that doesn’t allow him to think clearly any more. He needs to maintain self-control. The inferno of rage and hatred he bears toward the insubordinate barbarians who orchestrated this is an ugly, palpable thing, and he can _use_ it.

 

 _The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural_ , Master Snoke had taught the Knights, reiterating the doctrine of their ancient predecessors. Kylo doesn’t know where to begin. He understands the concept of midi-chlorians intellectually but has never been able to sense them in isolation, much less manipulate them at will. He had somehow regenerated his own lightwhip-wounded flesh through fervent meditation aboard the Finalizer. It _had_ to have been the same. He knows what he has to do, but doesn’t know if he has the strength to do it. He needs guidance, a mentor in this. Byt… or Skywalker… or even Master Snoke. The old humanoid could do it, he has no doubt; his strength in the dark side was incomparable. Nothing was beyond him. Kylo finds himself desperately, wretchedly wishing for Master Snoke’s counsel again, second-guessing his own rash impulse to slaughter him for the first time since that fateful day.

 

But the past is history, and he is alone.

 

The deep scar below his left ribcage from Chewbacca’s bowcaster bolt, fired in retribution for Han Solo, throbs incessantly. It would have been an instantly fatal wound, had Kylo not contained its energy immediately with the Force, binding it tightly to survive two opponents in lightsaber combat and evacuate Starkiller Base. He pounds his balled fist into it now, harder and harder as searing neuropathic pain flares and radiates through his torso, forcing him to double over.

 

Harnessing it all, he closes his eyes, clenches his fingers around his mother’s memento, and reaches out.

 

 

~

 

 

As the hours wear on, ominous grey clouds amass in the charcoal sky like malevolent angels, hanging over the remnants of jungle foliage razed to the ground. Fragments of silica glass slowly rise from the blast crater into the air, where they hang like stationary raindrops. One by one, they begin to oscillate violently and shatter mid-air, leaving a haze of fragments in suspension. The topsoil floats lazily upwards in a charred, inky blanket, buoyed up like sediment from the ocean floor, as though gravity itself has warped and shifted.

 

In the centre of the cloud of hovering debris stands a solitary black figure, his cloak enveloping his hunched form. An eerie blue corona illuminates the atmosphere immediately surrounding him as the dank air ionises and sputters. A shower of luminous writhing streamer arcs radiates for miles in all directions from his shuddering body with a sharp crackling sound.

 

A harrowing sight to behold, yet no one bears witness to this exhibition of tremendous, unfathomable power in the dark side.

 

The Force engulfs Ren in an immense tempest and he feels _everything_ – the space between atoms, the particulate nature of light, the way the fabric of time itself can be ripped apart, remodelled and melded back together at will. His knees shake and buckle under the bone-rattling cacophony of the galaxy’s energy all sounding out, all at once.

 

After hours of channelling the dark Force, surrendering his everything to it and venting lightning into the stormy sky in a monstrous maelstrom of power, his mortal body, unable to endure any further, collapses to the ground.

 

 

~

 

 

Kylo awakens to the gentle glow of sunrise behind his eyelids, the lush fragrances of petrichor and wet leaves. It must have rained overnight as he slept in the dirt; his thick cloak is soaked through and dark curtains of his hair cling wetly to his cheek. He pushes himself up on one arm, absently brushing away the muddy soil caked to his whiskers. A peculiar choice of resting place for the night, he muses, looking over the imprint his recumbent form has left behind in the earth as he rises to his knees, but he has slept soundly and feels freshly reinvigorated for the first time in weeks. He senses his men aboard the command shuttle, anxious to vacate this place, restock and refuel.

 

Leia’s promise ring lies in the soil by his imprint, and it all comes crashing back.

 

She is dead. It wasn’t enough. He is weak.

 

 

~

 

 

The Supreme Leader perceives two viable courses of action, his life at a crossroads. He could ignite his corrupted purple saber through his chest right now and be free of this pain. A fitting end, to die as he murdered his father, a retribution of sorts. But Byt would feel it, that pitiful, idealistic hierophant whose existence revolves around restoring his dead soulmate, and realise that his blind faith in his brother was misguided. Kylo must, at least, first confess to his old friend that he has failed.

 

And Rey… she has never felt further away. She will never be his.

 

Or he could embrace the monster within that his parents shrank away from and banished, which Master Snoke sought after and carefully nurtured. Deaden himself to the relentless pull of the light and seize his birthright as heir to Lord Vader; become the galactic ruler with an unconquerable army. It’s all he knows. The residue of last night’s consecration to the darkness still thrums within him, revitalising and strengthening him spiritually and physically. He feels more powerful than ever before.

 

As Kylo kneels by the crater, silently considering his fate, he registers a faint jolt as something is pulled from his belt by an unseen force.

 

Seconds later, he hears the unmistakeable hum of a lightsaber igniting behind him. The tiny hairs on his skin singe from the intense heat of his own amethyst blade as it is drawn menacingly to his throat. In that instant, he understands with perfect clarity that he has truly lost everything that is precious to him in life.

 

Rey’s voice is hoarse and gravelly with choked-back tears. “Murderous snake,” she accuses icily to his back. “You killed them all.”

 

He chooses the monster.

 

Pivoting on one knee, Kylo thrusts his splayed hand toward her chest before she can react, Force-blasting her away as hard as he can. Her tear-streaked face contorts in shock as her petite frame suddenly, helplessly launches and is propelled at breakneck speed into the flattened ruins of the trees.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Twi’leki/Ryl translations:**  
>  _Nerra_ = brother  
>  _Numa_ = sister  
>  _Nobra edgra_ = I’m sorry  
>  _Tum, wasnawa uba_ = It wasn’t you  
>  _Waba jafasua fuji ji awadna_ = May the Force be with you  
>  _Ma-allesh_ = Goodbye


	13. Qc5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justice. Death for death. The darkness within her has no counterweight now, only all-consuming anguish and bloodlust, and she stops fighting it. It suffuses her with a heady sense of power unlike anything she has ever felt before.

 

 

She won’t let herself think about the ragged hole in the Force that refuses to heal itself, the sudden death of one so essential that it feels like the very fabric of the universe has been ripped apart. The woman she has grown to love like a mother.

 

Like Luke’s passing, there was peace – but no purpose. Only resignation. She’d felt it like a violent wave smashing into her chest, and screamed herself hoarse into the empty interior of her tiny shuttle.

 

She won’t mull over the upheaval in the cosmic energy within hours of her leaving Dathomir, as if thousands of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

 

Nor her insidious awareness just hours ago of the Force twisting inside-out on itself, a roiling darkness like swamp-sludge that made her stomach clench. She had abandoned the cockpit and bolted for the ‘fresher, vomiting into it over and over until all she could do was dry-heave, ashen grey and sweat-drenched.

 

She won’t let herself dwell upon the man kneeling before her now, whose own violet lightsaber blade she levels at his throat in a perfect, undaunted horizon. The way he looked at her as if she was the most precious thing in the galaxy. How feasting her eyes upon his naked form had awakened something visceral in her… how her skin tingled in the wake of his leather-clad fingers, caressing her face with unexpected gentleness.

 

_Tell me to stop._

 

Her left hand flits of its own accord to her forehead, where the wound he lovingly tended to has completely healed.

 

She won’t consider any of it. She _won’t._

 

Because the Supreme Leader of the First Order has taken everything from her – everyone she loves – and she has caught him, a warmongering brute inspecting his handiwork. The enormous crater stretching in front of them, lined with sand scorched coal-black and liquefied into glass shards, bears no remnant of the rebel base or her friends; only the smoky aftermath of everything they built together, everything they stood for. Her eyes prickle with unbidden hot tears and her blood turns to hoarfrost.

 

But now is not the time for mourning.

 

Now is the time for vengeance.

 

If Rey alone is the Resistance’s last stand against the First Order, then so be it.

 

“Murderous snake,” she chokes out. “You killed them all.”

 

Her accusation hangs in the air like a noxious cloud. Kylo pauses, but only for an instant, something close to fear crossing his features before he is once more unhinged with wrath.

 

Then, leather-clad fingers spread wide, he launches her.

 

 

~

 

 

When she was twelve years old, Rey’s landspeeder, assembled from scrounged military hardware and civilian machinery, was rammed by scavenger pirates aboard a much larger quadjumper – intent on being the first to plunder a freshly abandoned Star Destroyer. Her one-man repulsorlift vehicle careened away, spinning, in one direction; Rey’s tiny frame, propelled helplessly in another. The sickening crunch when her body collided with the churning desert sand told her – even before the dull throb of a broken ankle set in – that it would be a very long while before there would be any more foraged components to trade, or portions for sustenance.

 

It’s like that again now. Like a waking nightmare.

 

Except that instead of an airborne collision, Kylo Ren has hurled her away by will, a callous push with the Force. It’s all happening too fast. Her body is soaring powerlessly over the razed jungle at breakneck speed. Fallen trees as tall as cathedrals and the viridescent hue of rain-slicked vegetation, all razed to the ground, whiz past in a dizzying blur, the detail growing smaller and smaller as she shoots into the sky. At the peak of her trajectory, with humid air blasting her face like the thrust from a sublight drive engine, she looks down at the land hundreds of metres below and understands instantly that a fall from this elevation will certainly be fatal. Terror, chilling and fierce, claws at her throat.

 

When she feels herself begin to plummet, the ground rushing up to meet her, Rey harnesses all of her hatred and misery and _pushes_ against it, somehow still gripping the hilt of Kylo’s lightsaber like a life raft. The effect is almost instantaneous.

 

Her body rapidly decelerates, rocks, stills – suspended maybe ten metres above the ruined jungle.

 

The blast radius from the First Order’s attack is devastating. Catastrophic. There is no chance that any of her friends would have survived this.

 

Forcing herself to focus through the aching hollowness of grief, Rey descends to the terra firma, gently, controlled. Her boots settle on rain-slicked leaves and she whirls back to face the crater, now a faraway blemish on the terrain. She hadn’t anticipated his brutal pre-emptive strike, but this is far from over. She won’t let him fling her aside again like an ill-tempered toddler with a rag doll. If Pla Ren could overcome a Force-push… so can she.

 

Steeling herself, she sprints ahead across the flattened foliage, leaping over protruding branches, her boots barely kissing the land. She runs until her lungs ache and her mouth is unbearably dry, until the warm humidity of the jungle makes her feel suffocated, perspiration-soaked clothes and hair clinging to her skin. Her need for vengeance festers like a septic wound, driving her onward, back toward the pit. She will never cower before the Supreme Leader. She will die first.

 

Kylo senses her approach. She feels his sullen lassitude falling away, and suddenly – he’s coming.

 

His mind extends out to hers across the debris, overwhelming her completely before she can construct any kind of mental barrier. Defenceless against his invasion, she perceives Kylo Ren - already deep inside, riffling through her thoughts.

 

Taking heed of her surroundings, seeking her out like a homing beacon. The crater, looming ahead now, craggy and blackened against the bright blue sky.

 

Spectating at her every heated sparring session with Finn and Rose and Poe this past solar cycle, every passage on lightsaber combat in the Sacred Texts she has struggled through with Leia, in frenzied preparation for her inevitable face-off with the Supreme Leader.

 

Observing her months of planet-hopping with the Resistance: prestigious Jedi warrior to some, dubious hanger-on to others. Her isolation, even amongst them all – wrapping her arms across her chest in the dead of night, seeking solace.

 

Sensing the intense fear she exudes now.

 

Rey reaches back, a hasty counteroffensive – but the instant she retaliates, he relinquishes his unyielding hold. She feels his spiralling temper, blood running hot, self-control on a knife edge – then nothing. The low timbre of his battle cry booms across the jungle in a steady crescendo as she draws closer.

 

She’s hopelessly outmatched, she knows. On Starkiller Base, he was already at a disadvantage; mortally wounded from Chewbacca’s bowcaster fire, a smoking hole in his shoulder from Finn’s lucky strike. And he’d toyed with her, wanting her as an apprentice rather than an adversary, his blows experimental, testing her mettle.

 

He’s so much stronger now. And her allegiance is clear.

 

This is no game.

 

Every fibre of her being compels her to turn and flee for her life. Her pulse pounds at the base of her throat and thuds behind her eardrums. Yet the fates have drawn them together, on this day, at this hour, to do battle – opposing forces in a generations-old war, champions of the dark side and the light, and if Rey is destined to perish with the rest of the Resistance – she will go down fighting.

 

Spying him at the lip of the crater, she halts, reignites his saber.

 

It feels different in her hands to Luke’s. Heavier. More cumbersome. Its brilliant amethyst blade is longer and brighter – but somehow, _right_. As if it has always belonged to her. The weapon seems alive, resonating with the currents of the Force surrounding her and amplifying them, channelling her strength. Snapping the world into focus. Rey twirls it masterfully in a figure eight about her torso, faster and faster, testing its weight. It sings in her hand. A full solar cycle ago - before the world fell out from underneath her - she wielded this very same lightsaber against Snoke, its red shaft and quillions sputtering and snarling like a controlled flame… it has changed now, but feels no less like hers. Its thrumming purple beam moves as one with her body, feeding the anger welling inside.

 

Justice. Death for death. The darkness within her has no counterweight now, only all-consuming anguish and bloodlust, and she stops fighting it. It suffuses her with a heady sense of power unlike anything she has ever felt before.

 

Fixating on the charging miasma that is Kylo Ren – ruler of the galaxy, murderer of everyone she held dear – Rey brandishes his weapon and rushes at him.

 

 

~

 

 

Kylo comes at her inhumanly fast and hard, like a cyclonic blast. Unarmed, but not defenceless. Seeing nothing but an atramentous blur, Rey launches herself at him with every ounce of strength she has, wielding her blade ready for a vertical head-chop.

 

He’s much too quick. Jerking Pla Ren’s saber from her belt into his open palm with the Force, he somersaults across the wet foliage beneath her. She sails over the top of him and lands, struggling to remain upright on the slippery earth, hearing his heavy footfalls at her back as he springs to his feet.

 

“What have you done?!” she cries, whirling to face him.

 

She almost wishes she hadn’t. Kylo’s face is haggard, rage and pain chasing each other across his features. His deep-set leonine eyes flash and he snarls, baring crooked teeth. Without a word, he appels, stamping one boot out wide, igniting the fiery scarlet beam parallel to his leg. The plasma blade drones to life with a menacing hum.

 

Rey advances one step, then another, her weapon raised in a window guard. The atmosphere around her shivers and trembles; mud and fragmented greenery float into the air in the wake of her boots in a hazy carpet. Kylo refuses to give ground.

 

Swinging her beam wide, she slices at his left arm, driving her full weight behind the blow. He parries easily, absorbing all of the impact and her slight mass without even adjusting his stance. Their blades collide in a brilliant white flame, sending sparks flying, then he shoves her away – weapon and all – with brute strength.

 

Rey flounders backward but does not fall, and they circle each other slowly, sabers alight, eyes locked. Perhaps this is their destiny, she thinks – to destroy each other.

 

 

~

 

 

Their fight is brutal.

 

Months of training forgotten, Rey swings at him indiscriminately, raining blow after blow into his stolen lightsaber. Her fury is an inferno, lashing out at him like a series of solar flares. At first she is sloppy, barely blocking his ripostes as they drive her back. Kylo deflects every attack with ease, his return strikes infinitely more powerful, more calculated.

 

Their lightsabers blaze and shriek, vivid shafts of light dancing wildly.

 

She manages to slice a smoking gash into his right shoulder, daring to lunge in closer when he recoils, ramming the edge his scarlet blade into his stomach. He grunts as it scorches flesh, his black gambeson smouldering. Throwing her off with insuperable strength, his answering slash is immediate - screaming through the fabric of her tunic, grazing the tender skin above her breast.

 

Her boots slip in the muddy earth and she teeters backward. In an instant, Kylo is on her.

 

A lightning-fast jab of his beam narrowly misses the hilt of her saber, singeing the tiny hairs on her wrist as it slides past. She knows this technique – a sun djem disarming slash, described in the Sacred Texts.

 

And… _he_ taught it to her. A million times slower than this.

 

Rey counters, feinting an attack at his chest. He is ready - moving to block - but she twists her wrist instead, dropping her weight. Kylo realises her intentions, too late. The tip of her saber scorches through his leather breeches and he utters a bestial roar as it skims the skin underneath.

 

The dark lord seems indefatigable. The more she hurts him, the stronger he becomes.

 

“What did you do, Ben?!” she demands again, breathing hard, barely noticing the tears cascading down her face. The name feels wrong as it passes her lips; nothing of Ben Solo remains in this enraged, soulless animal.

 

Wordlessly, Kylo lunges again, slamming a diagonal cut at her boot. She deflects him with a drop parry – precisely as he instructed her – and for a brief moment, their eyes meet. The dark intensity of his gaze makes her tremble, his liquid eyes narrow and fierce, shining with hunger.

 

Rey backpedals, raising her blade in a vertical guard, ready to block, ready to attack, ready to leap away.

 

“Why?!” she screeches. “You murdered them all! Your _mother!_ My -” Her voice breaks and she bites her lip hard, struggling to maintain self-control. Her vision clouds with tears that will not stop. She can’t afford to succumb to her grief – not yet.

 

He moves too fast to track, raising one gloved hand, palm outward, to throw her again – but this time, she is prepared. Rey thrusts back into him with the Force, rocking only a fraction under the tremendous weight of his push – then hefts her saber, ready to sever his offending limb.

 

His voice is cracked and ragged, sending shivers up her back. “I didn’t.”

 

Rey will not tolerate his lies. Nor relent. The darkness is intoxicating, sending little frissons of power rippling through her. She wants to grind his body into the sodden earth, tear every ounce of flesh from his bones until he _truly_ understands what it is like to lose everything.

 

“Monster!” she squalls, lunging in to swipe at his thigh. “Have you no heart?! Your _own mother_!”

 

Kylo fends her off effortlessly, but from the shuddering breath he takes, the tired pallor of his face, she knows her accusations have touched a nerve.

 

Good. He’s weakened by her words. She resumes her assault with renewed vigour.

 

Blow after blow lands as saber strikes saber, sparking together with white heat. Her onslaught is vicious, pushing him back. Each time he retreats, she taunts him - twirling his saber with a skilful grace she did not know she possessed, in stark contrast to her fighting style. Her wrist vibrates along with the blade every time she slams it into his.

 

Rey’s technique is raw and savage, barely refined since Starkiller Base, but driven by a bloodthirstiness she cannot quell. What she lacks in mass, she compensates for in ferocity. She won’t allow him time to calculate an attack. Harnessing all the frenetic energy of the Force, she launches one slash after another in a mad flurry. Kylo parries her string of attacks, blocking her again and again, letting her beam slide against his own and harmlessly off to one side – yet she continues to force his retreat.

 

Until he catches her.

 

Locking her violet beam in place, he grinds their blades together and leans into her as close as he can without being singed. “It-wasn’t-me,” he grits out, his long face frozen in a seething rictus, eyes full of fire. The tiny muscle below his eye twitches rapidly.

 

Rey struggles to wrench her weapon free. His whole body is clenched tight, huge, solid and preternaturally strong.

 

With no alternative, she lets go.

 

Releasing the haft, Rey drops to the marshy ground and sweeps a roundhouse kick at his boots. Her reward is immediate – Kylo pitches backward, soles slipping on the wet leaves. He crashes to the earth as she calls his weapon back to her hand.

 

For a fleeting moment he is defenceless, laying spreadeagled and vulnerable at the edge of the crater with his stolen saber uselessly up over his head. Rey springs to her feet, weapon poised to strike. The exhilaration of her newfound power is overwhelming.

 

 _Kill him now,_ the darkness urges her. So easy. So quick. One life for many.

 

She advances, glaring at his prostrated figure. Twin pinpoints of purple light shimmer in his pupils, boring into hers. Disconcertingly, he lies still, making no effort to fend her off. His broad chest heaves, slashed clothing exposing cauterised flesh from the many strikes she has landed.

 

“Do it,” he goads softly, filling the ominous silence.

 

Rey hesitates – just a split second – and it’s all he needs. Kylo flings his left arm sideways in a single, powerful gesture, sending the saber flying out of her hand. Not missing a beat, she dives and rolls after it immediately, pulling it back… but not before he rights himself and, with an inhuman growl, stalks toward her, thrusting his blade forward ready to skewer her chest on its point. Her eyes widen in the grip of silent panic.

 

Could he… doesn’t his footing slow, just a little… moments before he could have -

 

Banishing the thought, Rey feels the comforting weight of his saber hilt strike her palm. She snaps it to life on the downswing and Kylo parries, clashing his blade into hers with a flourish, twisting it to force both their beams to the ground. Steam rises from the glistening foliage as it sizzles from the searing heat of their locked blades.

 

He’s trapped her again. So easily.

 

“ _Snake_ _!_ You murdered them all!” she accuses, her voice dripping with disdain, ignoring the tears blurring her vision. “Look what you’ve done!” She yanks fiercely at her weapon; Kylo holds it firm, using his considerable size and strength to his full advantage.

 

A deep flush of rage heats his cheeks. Sweat-slicked curls of his dark hair, plastered to his face, shine golden in the sunlight. “ _I_ _didn’t_ ,” he rasps again, panting, leaning in close. Too close.

 

It’s too much. The sound of his voice. He’s so much more real – stronger, more _present_ , in the flesh than through their connection. Unwelcome tears burst forth like water from a dam, spilling down her cheeks. She’s trembling. She can’t stop. Even as she struggles to yank her weapon free, her hands shake. It’s too raw… everything. Raw tears, raw grief. Washes of sorrow and anger crash over her. She mustn’t do this now. Kylo Ren will run her through without hesitation if she falters, even for a split second.

 

Howling out her misery, Rey rams him with the Force. He staggers backward, barely half a step, but just enough to dislodge her blade.

 

Flipping away from him with an agility she did not know she was capable of, Rey leaps onto the protruding limb of a fallen tree. Metres above the rain-soaked ground, she prepares for an aerial assault. Hesitates.

 

Something is wrong with her fingers. They are… glowing. A faint blue corona surrounds each of her finger pads. Drawing them nearer to her face, she feels the tiny hairs on her cheeks and scalp prickle with their electrostatic charge. Her heart lurches. This isn’t _her._

 

The distraction is more than he needs. Pla Ren’s saber hacks through the wooden branch as easily as through water, sending her tumbling back to the earth. The smell of burning wood permeates the air.

 

He bears down on her immediately. His blade flashes as he brings it over his head and hums a low, swift tune as he slams it down onto hers. The weight of his blow is staggering. She recuperates quickly, but the motion of his next attack is already in place. Then the next. He strikes again and again – always at her weapon, trying to hammer it from her hands. Rey blocks him and blocks him until her lungs ache and her shoulders burn with fatigue, seeking her opening for a counterstrike. He leaves her no opportunity.

 

As he tires, Kylo’s attacks degenerate into an artless, sloppy hacking, mirroring her own. No style, no form, no finesse. His onslaught drives her steadily backward into the ashen mud, perilously close to the lip of the pit.

 

She can not feel his primal excitement in combat, as she could when they fought together against the Praetorian Guard – if anything, there is emptiness. He feels nothing.

 

The salty tang of sweat and tears mingle on her tongue. She needs to end this quickly. Now. Before emotion overwhelms her. Arms screaming with exhaustion, Rey sidesteps and hoists her blade high, ready for a savage downward strike. Instantly, she realises her error. Kylo’s gaze flicks down to her unguarded abdomen, her legs splayed wide in a low crouch. She has left herself wide open.

 

Time seems to slow. She sees the motion of his legs, his arm dropping, the point of that ruby blade. He’s so fast. Impossibly fast. This is it – he will execute her now. Rey shuts her eyes.

 

But the impact never comes.

 

Kylo heaves himself into a sideways roll, narrowly dodging her plasma beam as it sings past him, striking the dirt inches from his shoulder.

 

He rises shakily to his feet, retreats a step, cross-guarding his torso.

 

Their eyes meet again. Somehow, she knows. He had a window of opportunity to slaughter her and let it pass. Confusion swirls in the periphery of her mind as she struggles to unravel each feeling from the tangled mass.

 

 _Kill him_ , the darkness demands. It would be a merciful act. Ending his treachery and oppression.

 

Rey charges once again, exhausted beyond reason and sobbing openly now, her only thought to obliterate him. Kylo retreats one step after another, fending off each blow weakly, his thick arms shaking with fatigue. She aims a windmill kick at his face; he dodges, bringing his lightsaber up in a blur, knocking aside a vicious thrust.

 

His elbows bent overhead, weapon held aloft – now it is Kylo Ren who has left himself exposed. If she is quick... she can spear him on his own blade.

 

A stray thought, clear as a holoprojection, gives her pause. He is remembering a fervid promise to Skywalker, to destroy her, and all of it… and a snow-dusted winter forest, how beautiful she was as she opened herself to the Force, sabers locked above her head… and how breathtaking she is now, ravening and ferocious.

 

Rey lunges at him. Just out of reach. Another step – he isn’t stopping her.

 

“W- Why, Kylo?” she stutters out, her chest shaking with loud, convulsive gasps. She must know first, before she finishes him. He’s taken everything from her.

 

His rigid shoulders sag a little, hearing his assumed name coming from her. “Do it,” he challenges again, his voice a flat monotone. Her lightsaber is poised inches from his stomach; his, still suspended above her head for a vertical strike.

 

She should slaughter him now – plunge it in and end it all.

 

He could split her open beneath his blade.

 

The world suddenly begins to shake beneath them and a deafening _crack_ rings out, many magnitudes louder than thunder; a terrible, deep rumble from the belly of the planet. Neither of them move at first, unable to make sense of the stimulus from their ears, their feet – until the intensity of the tremor destabilises them both, forcing them to stumble backward, out of striking distance. Without warning, the soil cracks open through the centre of the crater and up over its ridge, a jagged arc between them. Her balance precarious, Rey glances up into Kylo’s empty, embattled eyes. This is not the monster she is driven to annihilate… but a hollowed-out husk of a man. Her blade quavers with her trembling hands, so close to impaling him.

 

“Finish this,” he murmurs. His cheeks are flushed and damp, his own amber eyes glazed now, breath coming in shuddering sobs.

 

 _No! No! No!_ _No!_ screams the child within, who found tenderness and compassion inside a cold stone hut on an unwelcoming, foreign planet.

 

She can’t.

 

After everything he has done, even with the darkness coercing her to butcher the Supreme Leader, promising that she can still emerge from this, victorious… Rey can not impel herself to do it.

 

But she has no doubt that he can – and will.

 

Kylo splays one leather-clad hand and freezes her in place, wrenches his lightsaber from her grasp with the Force and flings it away with a flick of his wrist, lowering Pla Ren’s sword to her eye level.

 

“You want to avenge your friends,” he remarks impassively, that same chilling monotone, even as his chin trembles and his dark lashes brim heavy with tears.

 

Rey starts to utter a snide retort, but her mouth refuses to respond. The silence between them sparks with hostility, sizzling through the air. He has taken her command of speech. _Heartless, power-hungry, kriffing_ _animal_ , she thinks at him, struggling to break free from her invisible bonds. _I was wrong. So wrong. It_ is _too late._ She senses nothing of Ben in the dark warrior before her now.

 

Kylo extinguishes Pla Ren’s saber, clipping it to his belt. He prowls in slow, deliberate circles about her paralysed body, charred clay squelching at her back as he rounds her, closer each time. Adrenaline surges through her veins at his approach. She wills her feet to run, but they are rooted to the ground. She tries to track him with her eyes, but her head refuses to turn. His fingertips are sparking, lurid arcs jumping erratically between them. Frantic, she tries to scream, but he will not permit it. No part of her body responds to her commands.

 

Fixing her with a predatory gaze, he moves steadily nearer until his face is inches from hers. Close enough to bite – if she could move. His pallid skin glistens with the sweat of battle and his breathing is heavy and ragged.

 

“ _It–wasn’t–me_ ,” he hisses through gritted teeth. A single tear escapes the corner of his eye and in that moment, against all reason and logic, Rey believes him.

 

Another gesture of his hand, and her world darkens. She collapses under the compelling weight of a Force-sleep, all of her tumultuous thoughts fading to black.

 

 

~

 

 

“She’s here!” Finn hollers, treading cautiously through a slick carpet of leaves toward the perimeter of the explosion crater. They had spotted Rey’s unmoving figure from the air, a greyish speck on the periphery of the horrifying black pit where their base had once been. The sight of her flooded Poe with relief and dread, in equal measure.

 

Three returned shuttles; nineteen personnel. Two men back from Storrd Township. Thirty four unaccounted for, including General Organa Solo. Twenty one rebels without a General. Poe swallows hard. No. Not yet. Not until he is alone in the cockpit, will he even think about trying to unpack all of this. Less than a klick away, the handful of soldiers survey the scene in utter horror.

 

“Is she...” He can’t bring himself to ask, his heart in his throat, staring at her collapsed form.

 

Finn breaks into a sprint, stumbling across the miry surface towards her. Poe hastens to catch up. His boots lose traction on the waterlogged soil as he skates awkwardly forward.

 

Dropping to his knees beside her, Finn presses two fingers to the base of her neck.

 

Clearly the First Order and its Supreme Tyrant are finished with her now, Poe concludes; dumping her amongst their wreckage, presenting her on a silver platter to the squadron whom she has betrayed. He finds himself unable to speak, and waits, his breath hitched painfully in his chest.

 

“She’s alive!” declares Finn, looking up, jubilant.

 

Poe cannot share in his joy. “Good,” he remarks numbly. His weary eyes are drawn to the lightsaber hilt resting on her abdomen, then to the footprints in the muddy ash – Rey’s petite, shallow imprints and a second set, much larger and deeper. They’ve left her a kriffing laser sword… why? By the look of her, she has been in a fight. Dissonance with the Order, probably, when it became apparent exactly what was expected of her.

 

Although from what has become of their former base – perhaps Rey has already served her purpose.

 

Finn begins to gather up her limp body, sliding one arm beneath her shoulders, the other under her thighs.

 

Poe raises a hand. “Leave her.”

 

His command earns a confused look from Finn. “Huh?”

 

“I’ll do it,” he assures, crouching beside Rey’s form, levering her roughly from Finn’s arms over his left shoulder. Poe has imagined himself hoisting her up like this before, but under vastly different circumstances. _Her easy laughter, fists pounding weakly into his back in a jestful parody of defiance as he carries her away. Demanding_ _to be put_ _down immediately, wanting no such thing._ _Small, muscular thighs secured in the curve of his arm._ He wobbles to his feet on the slippery ground, hefting her slight weight with ease, letting the lightsaber fall to the ground.

 

Finn is quick to retrieve it.

 

“What are you doing?” he admonishes. “If she’s injured, that’s… that’s not how you lift -”

 

“Taking her into custody,” Poe interrupts, his tone grim. Turning back to the shuttles, he wraps one arm firmly around her thighs and carefully manoeuvres across the terrain.

 

Finn’s steps come to an abrupt halt behind him. “Come again?”

 

“Not the first time the First Order has known where to strike,” he replies sourly. “You heard the traders at the depot. Since when have DL-fourty-fours gone that dirt-cheap? `No buyers at Nightbrothers no more,’ remember? Since the First Order blew it sky-high?”

 

“Yeah… so what? Are you… suggesting...” Finn jogs to catch up, and Poe half expects him to try and wrestle his friend away.

 

“I’m not _suggesting_ anything. Her cruddy ship’s log recorder says she’s just come from Dathomir,” Poe bites back. “We released her at the _Deep Core_.”

 

“Poe!” Finn rounds him and stops obstinately in front, blocking his path. “What are you saying?” The others wait for them expectantly, watching their progress. They want guidance. Leadership. Any sign that their spark of hope has not been smothered out.

 

“I’m saying that until we get some answers, Rey is...” It pains him to say it. “Is… a prisoner.”

 

Finn’s eyes widen. “You can’t be serious! That’s _Rey!_ ”

 

“I’m well aware,” he answers curtly. The weight of responsibility to these remaining few is overwhelming. He must maintain a steady composure, do what needs to be done and push through until he can make sense of all this. His calculating mind runs at a billion miles an hour… they had pressed every shuttle into service for this last supply run, at the General’s behest… and she would have been too frail for a journey on foot to the Township, having dismissed her attendants.

 

Surely not.

 

Thirty four still missing… three shuttles, deployed to Dirama and Nicale. Further away than the others. He must hold on to hope.

 

A bewildered Finn and twenty one soldiers surround him as he approaches their landing site, awaiting orders. Poe addresses them succinctly. “Rey is to be treated as a prisoner. Be kind. But make no mistake… until we gain a better insight as to how and why...” He turns back towards the crater, paying no mind to their uneasy expressions. “Treat her with suspicion and remain vigilant.”

 

None of them argue. Pushing past, he carries her into the belly of their modest flagship, through the access tunnel and into the brig. Entering the first cell, he slides her gently down into his arms, then lowers her body onto the deck, careful not to hurt her. She looks so peaceful, so deceptively innocent like this. The pale skin of her throat is blemished with evenly-spaced yellowing bruises, her limbs and chest beginning to bloom the livid blue-black of freshly pounded flesh, sporting cauterised wounds at different stages of healing. What has Kylo Ren done to her?

 

...and, more importantly, how does one restrain a Jedi Knight? Poe has been on the receiving end of her unfathomable power more than once during their sparring sessions. As ludicrous as it sounds, he would swear on his mother’s grave that she has knocked him flat with nothing but her gaze, or a flick of her fingers. He doubts that even Rey knows her own strength.

 

BB-8 will give him the third degree over this, he considers gloomily. The little astromech has developed a fierce affinity for the girl.

 

But as loyal as a droid can be, its preprogrammed circuits will never be able to decode or extrapolate the evil and duplicity that lurks in the hearts of all sentient beings. 

 

 


	14. ...Bg4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he cannot restore Leia Organa, he will have his revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical inspiration for this chapter: [Marilyn Manson - Cry Little Sister](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG5sFUROGX0%E2%80%9Drel=) (Gerard McMann cover)
> 
> Another chapter that I thought might scare off my co-author. Proceed with caution.

   


   


Rey is… _extraordinary_. She blazes in his sense of the Force, almost radiant with power.

  
  


Her remarkable dexterity with a lightsaber is beyond anything Kylo could ever have anticipated. She attacks savagely, frenetically, without reason or calculation. She is everywhere, hot and bright in his perceptions as her blade whirls and whines into his, over and over. Her rage pulses in intoxicating waves through the Force. Her fighting style is hungry and raw, moving with astounding agility as if she were a beast finally freed from the confines of the light. Kylo senses it, her lust for the darkness. So close. So close to giving in.

  
  


Raising his saber to meet hers as she tries to split open his skull, he locks their blades, staring raptly as she seethes and struggles to wrest hers free. They crackle together with white heat. He holds it in place and watches her grapple furiously until, with feral growl, she yanks it backward and immediately aims a second slash at his waist. He sends it wide, narrowly rebuking her arcing swipe at his face in answer.

  
  


The dark side buoys her with its grace. Rey’s stamina is astounding. Neither the rain-slicked foliage of the jungle nor the loose detritus around the explosion crater impede her easy, fluid footwork, her swordplay infinitely more skilful than he would have guessed from sparring with her. He could so easily drag her to him with the Force and split her open on his crimson beam … but instead he tries first to tire her, then simply parries and deflects, weathering the flurry of chops she hammers into his humming blade for what feels like an eternity until he is panting from exertion and his shoulders burn with fatigue. In her hands, his weapon is a wheel of pure amethyst fire, spinning deftly about her body in a technique so alike his own. Her voice is thick with venom as she beckons and taunts him to strike her, echoed by jitters and spikes in the Force. The very earth quakes and cracks open under her sheer power in the darkness… or perhaps their combined power.

  
  


He is enjoying this too much. Engrossed in her. Rey would kill him right now without remorse, yet he has never wanted her so badly.

  
  


She is truly breathtaking when she succumbs to her rage, letting it blaze in her eyes and colour her cheeks.

  
  


The foreign weapon Kylo brandishes has retained some essence of Pla Ren and holds a peculiar aura of its own, something volatile and unstable. As he wheels its sparking length in sweeps against Rey’s relentless onslaught, the Kel Dor’s cries resonate through his mind like an auditory hallucination _– stay, you can never leave, it keeps you, stay… stay!_ He can almost _feel_ the tendrils of meaty flesh quivering at his cheeks. The scarlet beam sputters and growls, sapping at his sense of self, melding it with his fallen Knight.

  
  


Three times, Rey carelessly leaves herself wide open. The third time, he lunges in to carve his blade through her abdomen and falters, retreats, his hesitation clearly apparent to her.

  
  


It isn't until she willingly forgoes an opportunity to slaughter _him,_ one so simple that a padawan youngling could have taken it, that Kylo realises they have reached an impasse. For an instant, his eyes lock with hers and there's a beat of stunned silence between them.

  
  


This can’t go on.

  
  


He splays his hand and freezes her in place, wrenches the lightsaber from her grasp with the Force and flings it away with a flick of his wrist, feeding on her terror as she suddenly understands she is at his mercy, helpless and unarmed.

  
  


Kylo shuts down and belts Pla Ren’s sword. He circles her, prowling slowly, deliberately, around her paralysed body, drawing nearer each time. Sensing her adrenaline surge as he approaches. She is trying to turn, to run, but her legs refuse to respond. She tries to follow him with her eyes but her head will not turn. Wide-eyed, she tries to scream, but he will not allow it. He fixes her with a predatory gaze, moves steadily closer until his face is inches from hers. Her tanned skin glistens and her breathing is shallow and rapid.

  
  


“ _It–wasn’t–me_ ,” he hisses through bared teeth.

  
  


At a gesture of his gloved hand, Rey collapses onto the muddy earth, unconscious.

  
  


Hovering over her, Kylo spies his weapon glinting in the morning sunlight, far away among the fallen trees. He raises one hand and summons it. The black saber quivers for a second, then all at once tears free of the vegetation and comes bulletting towards his outstretched fingers. The familiar hilt striking his palm is a comforting sensation. He curls leather-clad fingers around its thickness and stands astride her, one black boot either side of her recumbent form.

  
  


The last hope for the Jedi Order lies comatose beneath him. Vulnerable.

  
  


He could do anything to her now. Spear her chest on his purple blade and extinguish this maddening obsession… slice her beautiful face open, scarring her for life as she did to him… take her in his arms as in the Takodana forest, abduct her and bind her inescapably, his prisoner to do with as he pleases. Anything… his dark eyes flick to her shredded, filthy tunic ripped open below the neckline, exposing the jut of her left collarbone, the swell of her breast… _anything._

  
  


No. If he is truly the monster she loathes, then she can rot alone in the ashes of her dead comrades. Kylo tosses his Knight’s weapon unceremoniously onto her stomach, pivots on his heel and strides determinedly away from the explosion crater. Before the temptation to do otherwise becomes overwhelming.

  


   


~

  
  


   


Lieutenant Mitaka awaits the Supreme Leader at the boarding ramp, shrinking backwards as the black behemoth approaches. “Have you found what you were looking for, Lord Ren?” he asks tentatively.

  
  


Kylo rolls Leia’s mangled promise band between his fingers, envisioning his adversary in combat lying unconscious and exposed in the desecrated ruins of the jungle. No, he has not. Not by half. His mother’s ring is at least substantive and solid… it will not dissolve in his grasp, like Han Solo’s ephemeral golden dice on Crait.

  
  


“Your… your Knight requests an audience with the Supreme Leader.” Mitaka motions toward the cockpit, interrupting the dark lord’s reverie.

  
  


“Where are you from, Lieutenant?” he counters distractedly.

  
  


“From the Finalizer, my lord,” the officer parrots.

  
  


“Yes, but… where were you born?”

  
  


Mitaka’s expression is blank. “...Sir?” He perceives this line of questioning as some sort of cruel lure that will later be punishable, but is still confused, not concealing his heritage… he simply does not know.

  
  


“How old are you?”

  
  


Mitaka frowns. “I have served aboard the Finalizer for twenty five solar cycles, my lord.”

  
  


He pales under the Supreme Leader’s scrutiny as Kylo towers over him, but outwardly maintains a stiff at-ease stance. The lieutenant’s mind is a rulebook of military protocol and procedural methods, piloting and weapons proficiency and etiquette to the chain of command, patterns deeply ingrained from birth. No independent thought; no impetus to challenge the status quo. Mitaka can conceive of nothing other than a life of servitude to the First Order. His eternal loyalty is without personal incentive – he is simply incapable of fathoming any alternative.

  
  


“Leave this place,” Kylo orders, turning away and retreating to the aft of the shuttle.

  


   


~

  
  


   


“The time for a coup d’etat is upon us, Council. Today marks the beginning of the technological revolution; a new era for the First Order.” General Hux stands rigidly at attention, his volume rising with every word, tiny particles of spittle shooting from his mouth with each consonant. His general’s cap and heavy black coat bear the hexagonal First Order insignia; the perfect paragon of leadership.

  
  


“Nice of you to join us this time, Kopecz,” Al-Jinn interjects snidely, sheathed in full songsteel plate-armour and brandishing her lightsaber pike as though ready for combat. She flanks Grand Admiral Sloane, their life-sized holopresence a flickering blue column alongside the General’s.

  
  


Kopecz nods acknowledgement, concealed within the shadows of his hooded cloak.

  
  


“Thought you’d be too busy worshipping your dead slum-whore in your lava pit, as usual,” she continues, earning a black look from Sloane.

  
  


The hood rises abruptly, revealing snarling, jagged teeth, but he remains silent. Kluub, however, feels his grip on her wrist tighten off-camera.

  
  


“He’s with _me_ , ignorant Hutt-spawn.” she bites back, her voice muffled through layers of plate-armour and the thick cowl overlying it.

  
  


“And you accuse _me_ of abandoning _my_ post!” Al-Jinn spits at Hux.

  
  


The general's eyes narrow to slits. “I have neither the time nor the patience for your puerile bickering, Council. We convene today to determine the future of the First Order.”

  
  


“Without our Supreme Leader? Or Captain Peavey?” Kluub asks dubiously. “Are we orchestrating a mutiny, General Hux?”

  
  


Hux bristles. “Our inconstant Supreme Leader has disappeared without notice once again on some frivolous errand, and is unreachable,” he articulates, reedy and contemptuous. “I have assumed leadership in his absence.”

  
  


“And Peavey?”

  
  


“He has deserted the Harbinger.”

  
  


Kluub raises a suspicious eyebrow; she had worked alongside him before her reassignment to the Abrion Sector. Edrison Peavey’s allegiance to the First Order spanned generations, since its inception and beforehand, in the days of Galactic Empire rule. He would not abandon his captaincy without good reason. She does not question the general, however, despite her scepticism, presuming that – as with innumerable known deserters and those of rank who have vanished, unaccounted for, over this past solar cycle – he has either fled from the Supreme Leader, or been killed by him on some elusive whim.

  
  


“Who’s his successor, then?”

  
  


“Lieutenant Stynnix, for now.”

  
  


She frowns behind the visor of her helmet. “So, where’s Stynnix? She holds a place on this Council, by default.”

  
  


“She’s young and stupid,” Hux scoffs in reply.

  
  


“The junior officers, like the Stormtroopers, are conditioned from birth,” Sloane explains diplomatically. “They’re incapable of individualistic thought; they are all trained for lifelong, unquestioning servitude. Stynnix will serve the Supreme Leader.” She trains her gaze toward the general. “Whomever that may be.”

  
  


Hux nods assent. “As I am certain you are already aware,” he continues, “your mercurial ruler murdered three of the Knights of Ren. If we fail to institute protective measures immediately, you -” he addresses each of them in turn - “Kopecz, Kluub, Al-Jinn, are earmarked for slaughter.”

  
  


“Why is he targeting us?” Al-Jinn asks.

  
  


“Because he’s unstable, and he’s afraid of you.” the general states flatly.

  
  


Kopecz and Kluub exchange glances; the cloaked Knight subtly shakes his head.

  
  


“Under my sovereignty, I can guarantee all of your safety,” Hux declares. “The galaxy shall be reborn anew and every remaining system shall bow to the First Order, with me as its Supreme Leader and you as its governing Council. We must not suffer the ignorant; such misbegotten ideals lead only to chaos! As we speak, a team of my architects, engineers, technicians and military chiefs is laying out plans for the First Order’s second and final superweapon. The weapon that will restore harmony to the galaxy.”

  
  


“Like Starkiller Base?” Kluub cannot resist the opportunity to remind the general of his beloved, ill-fated project.

  
  


“Better than crinking Starkiller,” Al-Jinn snaps. “Sun Crushers. A whole karking fleet of them.”

  
  


Hux affords her an irritated glance. Such a battlefleet would be apocalyptic to the known galaxy, leaving nothing over which to preside. Watching Hux’s reaction, Kluub speculates that he was indeed designing another incarnation of Starkiller – and considers why, and for how long, Al-Jinn has had another agenda.

  
  


She’s not the only one. “Sun Crushers, General?” asks Sloane, ignoring both her armoured shipmate and the grandiose sermon that Hux has clearly prepared.

  
  


Hux glances away from the holocam, momentarily losing his equilibrium, his eyes searching for something. “I… d- don’t...” He clears his throat. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  
  


Kluub stares at his diaphanous image for a beat. General Hux never falters. Never. Something is awry.

  
  


“How, exactly, do you plan to destroy Kylo Ren?” she asks hesitantly.

  
  


“His command shuttle will shortly leave Seregar, bound for the Conqueror.”

  
  


Al-Jinn recoils and sharply turns to face Sloane. “The _frack_ -”

  
  


“ _Ob-lit-er-ate it_ ,” Hux commands condescendingly, as if addressing small children.

  
  


Grand Admiral Sloane places a placating palm on the knight’s shoulder. “What of his crew, General Hux? Lieutenant Stridan and Lieutenant Mitaka?”

  
  


Hux snorts. “Collateral damage.”

  
  


“They are loyal officers, sir,” Sloane protests. “There are… more humane alternatives.”

  
  


“What _alternatives_ , Grand Admiral?”

  
  


“The neural distruptors Thalaam Ren issued from the Star Forge, for one. Manufactured at your specific request, if I recall correctly, General? Their electromagnetic pulses work remotely, subduing the victim without the collar being affixed. From what I hear, his shuttle is in need of extensive repairs. I will ensure several of the devices are concealed within the Supreme Leader’s quarters aboard the Conqueror.”

  
  


“And…?”

  
  


She shrugs. “Sedation. Poisoning. Shoot him in his sleep. Any number of options.”

  
  


“Let me,” whispers Al-Jinn.

  
  


“Very well,” concedes Hux. “I will leave… matters in your capable hands, Grand Admiral Sloane. Are all present in agreement?”

  
  


Sloane and the Knight beside her nod vigorously.

  
  


“Agreed, General,” comes Kopecz’s deep voice from beneath his hood.

  
  


Kluub gapes at her twin, stupefied, until he squeezes her wrist hard enough to cause pain. “Agreed,” she echoes uncertainly.

  
  


“We shall reconvene in twenty-four standard hours,” drawls Hux, turning his attention to Sloane. “I will expect good news,” he adds darkly, “should you wish to retain your captaincy.”

  
  


As the twin holograms coalesce into a single blue ray and vanish, Kluub Ren whirls to face her brother in horror. The articulated plates of armour enveloping her lekku grind against each other as she digs them into her back. “ _Noba tubu a hagua,_ _n_ _erra_! May spice salt your wounds, traitor!”

  
  


Kopecz sighs, releases her wrist and pulls back the hood of his cloak. His golden eyes glitter with anticipation. “The redheaded subordinate’s scheme is folly, _n_ _uma_. They will all be dead within a day at the hands of our Supreme Leader. I promise.”

  
  


“I could warn him? The command shuttles have holocomms...”

  
  


“Ye of little faith,” he chides softly. “He refuses to speak with anyone, regardless. I have tried.”

  
  


“Why?”

  
  


“Because he failed.” The blue Twi’lek regards her sorrowfully. “He is ashamed, and grieves his mother.”

  
  


“He can’t kriffing resurrect! No one wields that kind of power.” She eyes her brother carefully. “Uh… yet.”

  
  


Kopecz gently takes both of her olive-green hands in his. “I can’t delay any longer. I must depart for Bothawui before the contents of your supply crates spoil. I shall attempt to contact Ben every day hence. Perhaps he will accompany your crew and me during our second run.” He pauses thoughtfully. “And take off that ludicrous armour, Sinya.”

  
  


“Your second run? You honestly believe he will survive whatever Sloane and Hera have in store for him?” Kopecz’s prescient vision is clear enough to her through the touch of his flesh-and-blood hand: the remainder of the First Order Council is indeed slated for execution - and soon - but she frets nonetheless. Destiny is changeable.

  
  


“I have faith in our Supreme Leader, _n_ _uma._ ”

  
  


Kluub groans inwardly, releases his hands to extricate herself from her silver songsteel helmet and eases it over the thin armour plates sheathing her lekku. “Blind faith, Byt,” she admonishes, wrinkling her nose. “I only wear this rubbish for Council meetings, you know that. ...And I’m still going to try and warn him.”

  
  


“If Ben will commune with you...” Kopecz’s expression fleetingly clouds with concern. “Don’t let him know about your… transformation. And conceal your pike. Protect yourself. Please.”

  
  


She rolls her cerulean eyes, punches him in the shoulder affably. Her twin brother stands almost a foot taller. “Of course, worrywart.”

  
  


“I am serious.”

  
  


“I know…”

  
  


Kopecz turns to leave, hesitates, glances back at her. “What is it, Sinya?”

  
  


“ _Sun Crushers_ , Byt,” she mutters. “I thought the tech was obsolete. Some things shouldn’t be left in the hands of humans… or anyone… especially certain Courtsilian women. The First Order isn’t still manufacturing them, are they? Do you think Ben even knows?”

  
  


“I doubt that even our eminent general was aware before today,” her brother answers placidly. “Not to my knowledge, but until the Archives are destroyed, no technology is obsolete. But our Supreme Leader would never indulge such nihilistic fantasies.” His basso voice falters, and Kluub wonders whether he believes his own words.

  
  


She delicately folds the concentric cones of plate armour in on themselves, freeing her right lek. “Well, _nerra_ … should you see a star going nova on your way to the Mid Rim… uh, change your course, okay?”

  
  


“Rest assured, in twenty-four hours the Supreme Leader and the two of us will be all that remains of the First Order Council.” His azure lips curve upward in a sly smile, revealing rows of freshly filed, pointed teeth. “Then, _numa… Then_ , the time for revolution will _truly_ be upon us.”

  


   


~

  


   


Kylo holds the ring in his palm, absently stroking its charred gemstone. His command shuttle is bound for the battlecruiser whose laserfire destroyed his mother. The captain who pulled the trigger. The loathsome Knight who led them to her, sentencing her to death. The ring stirs cloudy recollections of a vibrant, loving woman, wondrously long, chocolate-brown hair braided ornately about her temples, smiling as she cradled her young son’s small face in her hands, touched her forehead to his, lightly kissed his nose. The simple, soothing melody of an Alderaanian lullaby she would sing to lull him back to sleep when he woke, besieged by nightmares of golden khalat auropyle robes and monsters too withered and mouldering to be human. The dulcet tones of her silvery voice. An open, gaping wound that refuses to scab over. If he cannot restore Leia Organa, he will have his revenge.

  


  
  


~

  


  
  


Ren’s shuttle descends into the Conqueror’s sixth hangar like an enormous black raptor, engines grinding as its huge wings fold upward. The transporter has sustained substantial damage – the hull is warped with dents and deep fissures, its left wing-tip bowing outwards. Grand Admiral Sloane ponders which criminal faction would be imprudent enough to fire upon the Supreme Leader and precipitate such wreckage; to do so would surely be suicide, both for the attacker and their entire syndicate. Their clandestine operations throughout the galaxy are only tolerated so long as they never fall afoul of the First Order. Decades of experience have taught her that the reckless, short-sighted actions of just one simpleton can be enough to incite war. And to think, if not for the two officers whom she mentored personally as children, her own Star Destroyer would have finished the job.

  
  


Armitage Hux will be the next Supreme Leader. Sloane already knew this when she threatened Brendol with death should he abuse the boy any further, when she and Gallius Rax first assigned Hux a platoon of child-savages with instructions to hammer their malleable minds into whatever shape he required, and over the years that the First Order Navy has flourished into omniscience under his unwavering command. It is his destiny to rule the galaxy.

  
  


With a hiss of hydraulics, the ramp lowers and the Supreme Leader emerges from clouds of steam, flanked by Stridan and Mitaka. Sloane and Colonel Datoo stand at attention by the foot of the boarding ramp to greet them with a modest entourage of Stormtroopers.

  
  


The two officers bow deeply as he disembarks. “Welcome, Supreme Leader,” she addresses, careful to maintain the tone of a solicitous underling. Even divested of his infamous helmet, the Supreme Leader is imperious and terrifying as he descends upon them. He is unnaturally tall and broad-set. The heavy cloak that billows about his huge, muscular frame is mud-soaked and slashed to rags, his tunic torn and sodden with muck, his unmasked face streaked with dirt and stale sweat. The beginnings of a beard shadow the hard lines of his jaw and a deep, ragged scar bisects his right brow and cheek. The dark pools of his eyes smoulder with hatred and barely-contained rage.

  
  


Sloane stands her ground, consciously fighting the instinct to flee. This man wields the Force; she has but a rudimentary concept of it, but knows she must be cautious. The last time she observed the sovereign ruler in such a dishevelled state was after he martyrized Koya Ren for challenging his supremacy, the Knight’s severed head barrelling towards her in a gruesome holoprojection.

  
  


She gulps. “Our mechanics will see to your shuttle immediately, my lord,” she declares, shrinking under his hard stare. “Your flagship is presently en route to the Outer Rim, ETA -”

  
  


“You have spoken with General Hux,” he interrupts tonelessly.

  
  


“Yes, sir. We are honoured to host you and your crew until such time as -”

  
  


“You follow his orders.”

  
  


“Yes, Lord Ren.” Her expression tightens.

  
  


“Take me to the primary command bridge.”

  
  


“Sir… if you so wish. Your quarters have been prepared ready for your arrival, should you -”

  
  


“Take me to the primary command bridge, Grand Admiral. Then I will meet with Al-Jinn Ren.” His demands are matter-of-fact, spoken without any inflection.

  
  


“Yes, my lord.”

  
  


Kylo Ren tails her, Datoo and two ‘troopers walking in lockstep silently through the hangar and passageways of the Conqueror into a turbolift, across the bowels of the spacecraft for half a klick, and for a second claustrophobic vacuum-lift ride to the command deck. When the doors open, he strides ahead of them onto the bridge and halts in wait at the astrogator platform. He knows this ship, Sloane realises. The internal schematics of each Resurgent-class Star Destroyer are identical.

  
  


“Activate the holorecorder,” he dictates without looking back at them.

  
  


Sloane and Datoo exchange panicked glances, both picturing the dismembered Knight on Dinzo just weeks ago, but Datoo hurries forward obediently and enters the initiating code sequence. The device hums for a second before a charcoal-coloured, ribbed cylinder rises steadily from its core. A repulsorlift cam-droid, activated and summoned by the electromagnetic pulse the system emits, hovers above the platform, its lens trained on the Supreme Leader.

  
  


As the droid projects Kylo Ren’s image to every planet and shuttle across the galaxy, his voice takes on a timbre lower and more menacing than any the Grand Admiral has ever heard. Sloane observes him with a cold dread.

  
  


“Members of the Council. Captains and Generals of the First Order army. Officers and soldiers.”

  
  


The bridge crew are deathly silent now, as if collectively holding their breaths.

  
  


“You will no longer take orders from the former General Hux. He has committed great treason, and is hereby stripped of all rank and authority.”

  
  


The collar of her uniform is tight, too tight, constricting her breathing. Sloane’s scream dies in her throat as Ren reaches out to her, an invisible hand clutching at her windpipe and dragging her violently forward. Suspended in his remorseless grasp inches above the deck, she struggles to draw breath and her fingers claw at thin air in a futile effort to free herself.

  
  


“This is what will become of anyone who takes orders from the former General.”

  
  


Her terrified, plethoric face is broadcast throughout the cosmos for all to see as she is choked.

  
  


“He is to be arrested on sight,” Kylo decrees. “There is also a bounty on his head. Two hundred thousand credits.”

  
  


Sloane gurgles helplessly; her surroundings are greying and beginning to fade when Kylo finally turns to face her. “You may shut down the recorder,” he instructs. Her throat is suddenly released. She crumples onto the deck, sagging on the polished floor and whooping precious lungfuls of air. Datoo hastens to kill the transmission. Before her head clears, in her peripheral vision Sloane witnesses the Supreme Leader boarding the turbolift alone, unimpeded by the section of ‘troopers standing guard, whom he brushes aside with a gesture of his gloved hand like motes of dust.

  
  
  


~

  
  
  


Kylo senses Al-Jinn’s weak presence in the Force aboard the battlecruiser – an ugly, malevolent thing that makes his blood boil. It draws him like a moth to a flame and he storms through the hallways of the Star Destroyer, following it, thinking of nothing other than impaling her on his blade. Something vile and decaying that must be disposed of.

  
  


While he navigates the winding corridors of the ship, driven by instinct and guided by the Force, Kylo becomes vaguely aware of another presence trailing him close behind. It reeks of hostility and fear. The captain. The woman he almost asphyxiated just moments ago; part of him can’t help but admire her audacity to give pursuit after that. He did not kill her outright because she was merely following orders. Then. Her motivations now, however…

  
  


Unfazed by his pursuer, Kylo follows the scent of chicanery and death across the warship. He ignores the ‘troopers marching past in pairs, who give him a wide berth as he passes, and the shaky salutes of junior officers who have never before beheld the Supreme Leader in person. The trail leads him to a block of crew’s quarters, remote and isolated from the rest of the ship. Strange, he contemplates, that in his absence Al-Jinn has elected not to partake of the more opulent Supreme Leader’s chambers, of which there is a carbon-copy aboard every one of his battlefleet of thirty Star Destroyers.

  
  


Her malignant aura festers behind the second in a row of key-coded doorways. Kylo stills abruptly before it, snatches up his lightsaber without hesitation and ignites it, stomping his boot wide, the amethyst beam parallel to his right leg.

  
  


“Supreme Leader,” comes a sombre female voice at his back.

  
  


He slices the blade through durasteel and the coded keypad mounted alongside the door as effortlessly as if it were air; the keypad disintegrates in a shower of sparks.

  
  


“Lord Ren!” Sloane’s voice is more forceful as she rounds him and positions herself between his hulking form and Al-Jinn’s doorway.

  
  


Kylo lifts the saber to his shoulder in a window guard, glowering at the Grand Admiral down its humming length. “Get out of my way,” he growls.

  
  


“You will not harm Al-Jinn Ren,” Sloane declares, stoically holding his stare, maintaining her position.

  
  


“Your disobedience will be your death, Grand Admiral,” Kylo simmers, his deep voice barely above a whisper. “Get out of my way.”

  
  


“I have orders to protect her,” she replies, calmly drawing her subrepeating blaster from its holster and aiming its barrel directly at his chest.

  
  


“I gave no such orders.”

  
  


Sloane fires.

  
  


He reacts too quickly for a normal human to observe. To Sloane, there is an instantaneous blur of shadow and movement, a luminescent purple arc as her plasma bolt somehow ploughs into her own abdomen, burning through tender flesh a second before she registers the searing white heat of agony from the smoking hole in her stomach. She doubles forward with it, stunned and disoriented, but the dark lord isn’t finished with her.

  
  


“ _Come out and face me, traitor!_ ” Kylo roars.

  
  


He splays his fingers outward and _pushes_ with everything he has. Al-Jinn’s durasteel door explodes inward in pieces off its tracks at the same instant that every vertical illumination panel in the corridor erupts in a waterfall of sparks, blinding them in its intensity then shrouding them in complete darkness. Grand Admiral Sloane’s svelte body, rigid and near-convulsing in pain, is lifted from the deck into the entryway by an unseen force.

  
  
  


~

  
  
  


Caterwauling like a crazed banshee, Al-Jinn charges forward in pitch-black and swings the scarlet beam of her lightsaber pike savagely at the shadowy figure framed in her doorway, hacking through the sinewy meat of its top half and immediately back underneath through its pelvis. Segments of her oppressor’s charred flesh fall with satisfying wet thuds to the deck.

  
  


She is victorious.

  
  


It was almost too easy.

  
  


Her heart freezes as a purple lightsaber blade blazes to life behind the remains of her dead adversary, illuminating the darkened passageway with a lilac hue and casting an eerie glow over the snarling, demonic face of Kylo Ren. The creature from her nightmares.

  
  
  


~

  


  
  


She can’t show fear. She won’t let him win. Al-Jinn is no longer the spineless doormat shab from the Temple – the runt of the litter - she’s the next Supreme karking _Leader,_ destroyer of worlds. The Navigators foresaw it and sought her out over the others. This barbaric animal stalking her is merely a facade around an unstable, broken human being, she reminds herself, with erratic human emotions and insecurities that can be exploited. His grief pours out of him, polluting the Force around him. He mourns the Jedi she killed for Hux. But she can barely see through the visor of her helmet, save for the hazy reflections from their dual plasma beams, and she mustn’t let him drive her backwards into her unlit quarters, from which there is no escape.

  
  


She feints an advance. Kylo slashes at her legs. Evading the lightning-fast swipe of his saber, Al-Jinn launches herself forward in a dive roll. She hears the funereal hum of the blade passing harmlessly underneath her, the metallic ringing of her plate armour as she somersaults across the deck-grating, gauntleted hands held aloft clutching her pike. She springs to her feet and is instantly propelled into the wall by a sudden, jarring impact behind her right pauldron as his saber connects. Frack, he’s strong… and quick. She peeks at him – his blade already poised for a lethal head-chop. He could crush her helmet with the sheer brute force of his blow, lightsaber resistant metal or not. _Karabast_ , his krinking _fingers_ are crackling with electricity in the darkness, like Snoke.

  
  


Bearing forth her incandescent lightsaber pike like a torch, she spins on her heel and bolts away though the dingy passageway.

  
  


The damned prince of darkness has disabled power to the entire sector. Al-Jinn flees for her life, cornering left and right at random at each intersection of passageways in the vain hope of shaking him. She bypasses one, two, three turbolifts – too risky to summon one and wait. Wait for him to bear down on her. His speed in combat is phenomenal – she knows this from sparring with him under Snoke – but shavit, surely he can’t run at lightspeed now? Or atomise? Just how powerful has he become?

  
  


Without warning she lurches backward, sabatons flailing for purchase on the deck as something intangible freezes, then lifts her. Trapped in suspended animation, Al-Jinn whimpers in horror as the hinges of her plackart creak open of their own accord, her breastplate cracking apart and torn asunder, metal plates hurtling into the walls and shattering dormant illumination panels. Her gauntlets immediately follow, ripped violently from her wrists by an unseen force, then her hinged vambraces – she instinctively straightens her elbows, sensing the savage pull, lest she lose her arms with the armour like wings plucked off a millfly. Her weapon tumbles uselessly to the deck.

  
  


“ _Usenye, hut’tuun! Dar’jetii!”_ she screeches at the searing heat she perceives building in the pitch-black corridor in her wake, sweat beading on her brow. “ _Ne shab’rud’ni, aruetii! You killed my master, you fracking cad!”_

  
  


His heartless, whispered reply seems to come from everywhere. “ _K’uur, vod_.”

  
  


She struggles wretchedly against his invisible grip, utterly immobilised. Her neck is forcefully snapped back as her songsteel helmet is wrenched away, scraping painfully across her cheeks, and flung into the wall. _“E chu ta, sleemo!”_ she bellows into the darkness. “Your kriffing crystal is _diseased! Purple,_ Ben Solo? Gah, you are Princess Leia’s snivelling son after all. Slags to the light, both of you! _Tooska chai mani!_ ”

  
  


“ _Schutta, kung_.” His deep voice is faint at her back and deafening through her skull all at once.

  
  


Frantic now, she tries again. “Lazy chickenshit! Jedi-fucker!” she cries. “Have me `fulfil your destiny’ for you, will you, karking satyr? Murder your cranking little Force-slut and her band of revanchists? Do your own wetwork, you cowardly shab!”

  
  


The dark lord’s grip is faltering. She can almost move. It spurs her on.

  
  


“You kill everything you fuck, Ben? When you’ve fracking used them up? Soniee? That Jakkuvian desert-rat – _your karking Force-whore?!”_

  
  


A bestial, low-pitched rumble behind her – close, much too close – and her imprisonment is broken, her body clattering limply to the deck. Snatching up her lightsaber pike, Al-Jinn scrambles to her feet again, barrelling away through the hall at breakneck speed without looking back. Her face stings from the forcible unhelmeting that abraded her skin, but at least she can discern her surroundings fully – as much as the darkness allows. Kylo Ren’s wrathful, odious presence in the Force falls further and further behind.

  
  


She flies through the corridors, guided only by the light of her blade, for minutes that stretch into an eternity until she finally spies – thank the Maker! - a pinpoint of artificial light ahead. Bolting past marching pairs and quartets of Stormtroopers oblivious to her plight, she navigates haphazardly down junctioned passageways like a madwoman, her mind desperately clamouring for a strategy. Unaccustomed to prolonged sprinting in heavy plate armour, her lungs burn and her legs throb, yet she ploughs onward, her sole objective – survival.

  
  


Lightsaber combat? He’s taller and stronger, immeasurably more skilful.

  
  


Sloane? Her feelings tell her something is terribly wrong with the Grand Admiral.

  
  


And shavit… he has kriffing _Force lightning._

  
  


Outrun him? But within the finite space of a Star Destroyer, she can’t evade him forever. He can track her through the living Force, like a sabercat stalking its prey.

  
  


_Think_ , Hera! The karking dark lord is coming for her. She runs on, stumbling as her sabatons catch on the deck grating every time she changes direction.

  
  


His quarters.

  
  


The neural disruptors! It’s her only hope. They’ll impede her, too, but then… they’ll strip him of the Force. She’ll only have gutless Ben Solo to contend with. Dun Möch. It was her salvation just now… the weak-willed shit. His choices weigh heavily on him; the cornerstones of his life still plague him with doubt, and she will _use_ it.

  
  


Al-Jinn veers right, wild-eyed and puffing, halting before a turbolift shaft and praying to Kooroo that the harbinger of death does not reach her before the repulsorlift arrives. She summons it and turns her back to the hatch, staring down the empty passage with her weapon poised to strike, tremulous and hypervigilant, as though at any moment her dark tormentor will materialise from the rarefied air like smoke. She doesn’t know which is worse: Kylo Ren’s unanticipated presence at her doorway, or awaiting him like a lamb to the slaughter, knowing with terrifying certainty that she is being hunted.

  
  


But he’s just a man.

  
  


Every sentient being has their pressure point, a chink in their armour.

  
  


Soniee, an adolescent Keshiri, had her interest piqued in Ben Solo from the day Skywalker brought him to Tython. The boy, even untrained, was endowed with inordinate power, outlandishly handsome – _that_ much was evident at his arrival – and proved to be a talented, perspicacious pupil. Skywalker’s own bloodline. A novel challenge for the promiscuous bitch who, over the years, availed herself of everything else the student body had to offer – from those who were willing, at any rate. Unnoticed from the shadows of an ak-tree grove, Al-Jinn had first watched them together when Ben was seventeen, rutting behind the Temple while their fellow padawans slept, grunting and yowling like crinking lothcats in heat.

  
  


Their secret trysts continued for two years, unbeknownst to Skywalker – or perhaps he simply turned a blind eye. The Jedi Order forbade such intimate attachment to another, and yet that schutta seduced at least three of her Temple brothers into transgressing their oath. Soniee justified that without touching, holding, kissing – all that superfluous romantic druk – she was technically upholding her pledge. Scratching an itch. Al-Jinn balks at the memory. Gathering together an assortment of curious, horny teenagers and enforcing a vow of celibacy upon them was a trademark darksider move, thanks very much, Master Skywalker.

  
  


She supposes Ben learned at some point that he was merely one of Soniee’s menagerie of fuckbuddies, or that he wanted more… He was already communing with the darkness that Al-Jinn learned much later was Snoke’s presence, but she recalls him growing increasingly glum and distant in class, more ferocious and impassioned during lightsaber duelling and hand-to-hand combat. Enough to draw Skywalker’s attention. A confused, then-besotted Hera had offered to fill the void herself, her subtle advances repeatedly rejected. But that was an aeon ago. And when the day of reckoning came, Ben Solo did not hesitate to butcher his former mistress at the end of his padawan blade.

  
  


What of the sand gremlin, then? He’d used her to hoodwink and overthrow Master Snoke, then had her exterminated with the last of the rebel vermin on Seregar. Whatever that was… it’s obsolete now.

  
  


Al-Jinn often ponders what singular, seemingly insignificant events in history have shaped her destiny, the First Order’s, the entire galaxy’s. One cannot remove a single grain of sand from the desert without immeasurably changing something throughout all parts of the universe. She touches her cheek with trembling fingers – her fingerpads come away wet with blood, and she remembers the Navigators’ last vision. Wonders where aboard this ship they have sequestered themselves.

  
  


Where is her kronging lift?! She twists to face it, slamming her palm onto the call button once again.

  
  


“Al-Jinn.” A dead, husky voice behind her. “Turn around and face your destiny.”

  
  


She shudders, raises her saber pike in a front guard and slowly turns back.

  
  


She barely recognises the deranged, bloodless, empty-eyed thing that rushes at her in a black blur, effortlessly jerks her weapon from her grasp and lashes its own amethyst blade into her shoulder.

  
  
  


~

  


  
  


He’d wanted her ashes. So many have perished by his hand since Snoke, but never since murdering his oppressor has Kylo felt such an overwhelming need to covet their remains. Al-Jinn Ren deserves to mingle with the incinerated skeletons of his victims in the pit where his helmet rested, a gruesome trophy for his victory. Only this kill was a counterstroke for his mother; the others had been purely for sport. His, or Snoke’s.

  
  


Al-Jinn slaughtered Grand Admiral Sloane in cold blood. The Supreme Leader exacted vengeance for their revered captain. Colonel Datoo and his staff accepted his testimony without question, saying nothing of Kylo’s methods – his shredded cloak and tunic saturated with her blood, matted locks of his ebony hair dripping with it. He tastes it upon his lips. She had taunted him relentlessly about his debased weapon until he tossed it aside, unholstering something more acceptable. _That_ silenced her, initially. The haunting sound of her death throes rings in his ears, faint images of slicing glowing Kyuzo petar blades frenziedly through pale flesh as if in a dream.

  
  


General Hux has fled by the time the Supreme Leader returns to the Finalizer three days later. Admiral Yago, a survivor and former captain of the Supremacy, has resumed captaincy in his unexplained absence. The crew seem unsurprised by his disappearance.

  
  


Kylo makes his way to his quarters, a shell of a man lumbering like the living dead. It is as though his senses are diminished. His dinner had the consistency and taste of clay. The ambient sounds of the ship are muffled; the officers’ uniform colours duller and flat; the artificial light of the battlecruiser dimmed.

  
  


For the first time in weeks, he shambles into the ‘fresher, anhedonic to the scorching-hot water coursing down his back and smarting over his wounds. It brings him no pleasure. Battle wounds from Rey; from Al-Jinn. Both wished him dead. He meticulously washes the last of his Knight’s clotted blood from his hair, scrubbing furiously at his skin until it reddens and his finger pads wrinkle. His gaunt, haunted face in the mirror is near-unrecognisable. He is surprised that he can cast a reflection at all. Even after shaving away the beard that two weeks of self-neglect has allowed to grow, an unknowable monster continues to stare back at him from the glass.

  
  


Alone in his quarters, Kylo dresses silently in black adesote nightclothes. He will sleep at last, perhaps forever.

  
  


Instead, he slumps down beside the foot of his sleeper, drawing his knees into his chest and wrapping one arm around them. The other hand clutches Leia’s promise ring. He presses the gemstone lightly to his forehead, rests his chin upon his knees, and cries until he aches.

  
  


He has never felt so alone.

   


   


   


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Huttese translations:**  
>  _Sleemo_ = slime  
>  _E chu ta_ = (expletive)  
>  _Schutta, kung_ = shut it, scum  
>  _Tooska chai mani_ = (curse involving the insulted person's mother and a Tusken Raider's chief)
> 
>  **Twi’leki/Ryl translations:**  
>  _Schutta_ = prostitute  
>  _Noba tubu a hagua_ = no, you don’t
> 
>  **Mando’a translations:**  
>  _Usenye, hut’tuun_ = f*ck off, coward  
>  _Dar’jetii_ = no longer a Jedi  
>  _Ne shab’rud’ni, aruetii_ = don’t mess with me (warning likely to be followed by violence), traitor  
>  _K’uur, vod_ = quiet, sister
> 
>  **Quote:** Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1800) "you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby ... changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole".


	15. Bg5?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe Dameron does not wear jealousy well. She barely recognises this raving, unhinged stranger against whom she is powerless to defend herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild sexual assault trigger warning.

 

 

 _Where_ _am I_ _?_

 

Her senses are dulled. Ravenous thirst. A lingering ache behind her eyes. The cool, smooth surface of something bulky and metallic encircling her neck. Shoulders, heavy and cramping, extended overhead – why can’t she lower them? Grating at her wrists, anchored in place. The air around her, with that dishearteningly familiar, flat quality and almost indiscernible odour that only recycled oxygen possesses. The telltale whir of machinery and engines. On a ship, then.

 

A jabber of muted voices, some in Basic, some unintelligible. Is she awake? Should we alert General Dameron? Just wait. He’ll be busy with…

 

Tentatively, Rey tries putting weight through her boots, somewhat easing the painful pull of her wrists. Her movement is restricted – feet locked together. Unfurling with excruciating slowness, she tests her ribcage and limbs for broken bones, passing her tongue along the backs of her teeth, like the old crone at Niima Outpost taught her. Everything hurts; everything is bruised and battered, but mercifully, not broken. Thank the Maker.

 

Her eyelids flutter open and the hushed voices intensify. Kriff, she’s moving. Get the General. Quick, get Dameron now. Her mind is muddled, thoughts smothered by a headache that thumps with her pulse, her vision unfocused. An orange blob scampers out of her visual field with soft, hurried footfalls. Her memory harks back to the last time she awoke like this – shackled to an angled platform inside a Star Destroyer, held captive for interrogation by a creature in a mask.

 

“Kylo,” she whispers into the fraught silence, her throat parched. The name triggers an image, some memory trying to untangle itself from the undulating haze.

 

Two more orange globules shift and dart away, leaving a dim room with no perceptible movement, harsh lights flashing at regular intervals on the opposite wall. Grey, vertical parallel lines partition her from the lights. Bars? Rey flexes her neck – it’s stiff and sore – and gazes down at herself. Though still fuzzy, she can see that her tunic and capris are filthy and slashed, desert wraps ripped and hanging from her belt.

 

“Kylo,” she repeats, louder, more urgently. Why has he allowed her to live – virtually unscathed? They had fought… and she had lost… hadn’t she?

 

Marching footsteps approach, harsh and metallic on the deck grating.

 

Has he imprisoned her again?

 

Their duel… it had been a disastrous mistake. She had stolen his violet lightsaber and ignited it in a tempest of rage, ready to decapitate her nemesis, when she should have fallen to her knees beside him, pulled him in close, shared solace in their grief for Leia. His mother; the closest to a mother she had ever known. No, not Kylo. It was -

 

“She’s awake, sir.” A clipped voice, heavily accented.

 

She hears the brief snick of a lock and looks up at the figure standing before her. His features are undefined, but his scent is comfortingly familiar – spicy soap and sweat and something inherently masculine. A glimmer of recognition makes her heart flutter; his long face is tanned, but pale by comparison to the halo of dark curls.

 

“Ben?” she murmurs.

 

He huffs softly. “Thank you, Emjon. Take a break.” Authoritative, but strained. The last of the flight-suited figures bows and ambles away.

 

How long has she been unconscious? In the sterile, metallic environs of her current enclosure, with no visible chronos or digital displays, it is impossible to guess. It could be minutes. Hours. Days, perhaps, since…

 

“No. Not _Ben._ Guess again,” her captor replies coldly, and his features snap into focus.

 

Poised opposite her is Poe Dameron, arms folded tightly across his chest, his stance rigid. He looks exhausted; the dark circles beneath his hooded eyes more pronounced than usual, the stubble shadowing his chin grown out and speckled with grey. Rey forces herself to stand taller, her wrists and ankles resisting any movement, and cranes her neck upward. Binders, tethering her arms to an overhead ventilation pipe. From the raw stinging at her wrists, she must have been almost suspended from them while unconscious. Her ankles are also stun cuffed, the links between them hanging loose. Those vertical lines… prison bars. A brig. Undeniably, she is a captive again… but not the First Order’s.

 

“Looking for your buddy?” The way he expectorates the word `buddy’ makes her uneasy. Spinning on his heel, he begins to stride to and fro across the cell.

 

Rey lowers her chin to investigate the weighty object enclosing her neck, tracking him warily as he paces. The device is smooth and round like a ring with sharply-defined edges against her collarbones. “Wh- why am I bound, Poe?” she stammers, trying to suppress the rising panic, acutely aware of her disadvantage. But… disadvantage? It’s not a thought that a warrior ought to have among their comrades. He hasn’t killed, nor injured her.

 

No answer; he continues to pace. Poe survived, she considers. Perhaps there’s still hope. Perchance more of them managed to evade the First Order’s attack… Finn? Rose?

 

“Poe?” she blurts, tugging frantically against her bonds. “How did you -”

 

 _“Shut up!”_ he flares, coming to an abrupt halt in front of her. Despite everything they have withstood together in the past solar cycle, she cannot remember ever seeing him like this. He is livid, jaw muscles bulging as he gnashes his teeth, quivering hands balling into fists.

 

Rey recoils instinctively, but she has no intention of being silenced, nor will she cower from him. “Unbind me!” she bites back. “What’s wrong with you? I’m not the enemy and you know it!”

 

Poe narrows his eyes. “Do I?”

 

" _Poe!_ Have you lost your mind?” She shakes her chains for emphasis. “When have I ever failed you?… Don’t you trust me? Let me go!”

 

His sardonic laughter curtails her protests. “Trust you..? What did _he_ offer you that I… that _we_ can’t?”

 

 _He_ , who? Does he mean Ben? She searches for an answer that might temper him.

 

“I’ve worked much too hard to give up now. Failure is not an option,” he declares. “The Resistance is _still_ a force to be reckoned with.”

 

Why is he telling her this now? She already understands his unwavering commitment, perhaps more than anyone; it mirrors her own. She has dedicated the first standard year of her new life outside of Jakku to their cause – unshackling the galaxy from the clutches of the First Order. The Resistance is where she belongs. It’s everything she has.

 

“I swore an oath to protect the Republic.” Poe turns away and resumes pacing the enclosure. “We will never be intimidated by the Order. We lit up Starkiller like a supernova. We survived D’Qar. Survived Crait. We even won at Grail City, with the odds stacked against us. Reduced to -” he gesticulates his arms about the interior of the brig - “ _this_ , we still liberated Ikkrukk. The Resistance is my whole life. ”

 

Rey waits on tenterhooks, feeling as though she is tiptoeing through a minefield.

 

“I will never bow to those thugs. We are the spark that’ll light the fire that’ll bring the First Order down. We may not save the galaxy – but we’ll save _our_ galaxy, Rey. The one within reach. You choose right over wrong. Choose to bring some light when there’s darkness.”

 

“Poe, I -”

 

“You’ve made your choice,” he concludes. “Remember Oddy?”

 

At his implication, she straightens her spine, glaring at him. Yes, she remembers only too well.

 

“We were building something here, together, Rey,” Poe adds quietly, his gaze piercing and inscrutable. The _we_ sounds all too intimate – he’s much too close – and she averts her eyes. “Black Squadron. Holdo’s crew. Everyone who answered Leia’s call. All of us.” He sighs. “We’ve dealt with spies before.”

 

“I’m not a -”

 

“ _Why did you do it!?_ ” he thunders, the suddenness of his outburst making her jump. “Why did you turn to the dark side?”

 

“What are you saying?! I’m with the Resistance! Always!”

 

He rams one boot into the bench beside her with an almighty _thud_ and she tenses again. “ _Traitor!_ ”

 

His accusations are disturbingly redolent of… Why isn’t he affording her a chance to explain, as he did Oddy Muva? Normally Poe is an impeccable judge of character; he values his teammates above all else, trusts them implicitly. Why not her? Surely, surely he can’t believe this insanity. He is never this volatile. In a moment of desperation, Rey does what she swore to herself she would never do again – and reaches for his mind.

 

Nothing.

 

It isn’t working. She grits her teeth, pushes harder.

 

“How far has it gone, Rey?” Poe howls, oblivious to her attempted intrusion. “How far has Kylo Ren corrupted you? How long has he been -” he gulps - “tainting you?”

 

“ _Poe!_ ” More forceful this time, she tries to pierce his thoughts. “That’s kriffing stupid!” Silence; not even the vague background ruminations she hadn’t even been aware she was listening to – until they aren’t there. “Do you even hear yourself?!” His mind is impenetrable – how is this possible? Has Ben somehow robbed her of the Force? “Let me go!”

 

He shakes his head contemptuously. “He’s made you into a monster, just like him.”

 

Perhaps he has lost his wuur-marbles – he has no grounds for such ludicrous accusations. But Pla Ren was haplessly deranged, and she could read _him_. Not Poe.

 

“What...” Another shove, plunging a needle of her consciousness between his eyes. It doesn’t work. “The Resistance is _my_ whole life, too!” she shrieks, trying to drown out the thudding heartbeat in her ears. “You’re all I have!”

 

An orange smudge appears at the periphery of her vision; its stereophonic bleating fills the chamber. “General? Do you need assistance, sir?” its toneless translator repeats. The Ithorian recruit reemerges tentatively through the mouth of the brig tunnel, his leathery neck twisting through the doorway above a high-visibility flight suit, probably drawn by the sound of raised voices.

 

Seizing the opportunity of Poe’s short-lived distraction, Rey heaves against her bonds – first with the entirety of her bodyweight, then reinforced with a savage thrust in the Force.

 

“ _No! Leave us!”_ hollers Poe, and the soldier vanishes, closing the bulkhead door behind him.

 

The links clink and pull taut, but do not break.

 

As she watches with renewed dread, Poe surges forward, pinning her bound legs between his and laying both palms flat against the duralloy wall at her back, arms bracketing her in place. His sneering face is dangerously close, cheeks dusted crimson with his rising temper.

 

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she protests; it comes out sounding like a petulant whine.

 

“No?” he grumbles. “So, we just happen to know of an attack on Peveron… Just in time. Convenient.”

 

Rey pictures the durasteel links across the pipe, imagines them stretching and snapping, wills it to be so. They don’t so much as tinkle. The Force has deserted her. Frantic now at his unnerving proximity, she twists her cuffed wrists, knowing they will be blistered and raw, hardly noticing.

 

“Then, without notice… You need to go on an urgent mission. Far, far away.” Poe is trembling with rage barely kept in check. “In the Deep Core. And yet… Dathomir. Way off-course, wouldn’t you say? Well, it's gone now. Just like that."

 

Rey’s face falls. Her instincts were right; she had narrowly escaped catastrophic destruction. How had the First Order known about Nightbrothers? Had she been followed?

 

Her reaction is all the evidence Poe needs.

 

“ _I’m all yours, Supreme Leader_ ,” he mimics, replete with disgust.

 

Where is this coming from? Poe has worked alongside her for a full solar cycle. Moreover, she has risked her life to save his, time and time again - freeing the Resistance from the crystal cave on Crait, drawing the enemy’s laserfire away from their rickety speeders. She has sparred with him so many nights, grateful for his eagerness and encouragement, especially for one with no perception of the living Force. Argued with him heatedly to let her accompany Black Squadron to Grail City, sneaked aboard the Falcon with Chewbacca nevertheless when Poe refused. Her loyalty to the Resistance is indisputable.

 

And yet… she’d said exactly that. Word for word. And _he_ knows. Guilt lances her. He’d trained her for the singular purpose of overthrowing the Supreme Leader: his lifelong quest personified. She could have followed through with that promise… and didn’t.

 

“That’s not wh -”

 

He cuts her off, smashing a fist into the bulkhead by her shoulder.

 

“You _betrayed me_!” Poe tears away from her, turning his back. For a moment, Rey is able to breathe again. His fingers interlace behind his neck as he stares up at the ceiling, flustered all of a sudden. “...Us,” he corrects, softer this time. “You betrayed all of us.”

 

It’s too late. He’s played his hand. He scrubs at his face, then reaches into his jacket pocket.

 

“I didn’t,” she asserts adamantly, brushing aside his inadvertent admission.

 

“No? Your tryst with the Supreme Leader… and then...” Pivoting abruptly, he advances on her again and slams a silver cylinder into the duralloy wall behind her. The metallic _clang_ makes her flinch. “ _T_ _his_.” Pulling back, he ignites the lightsaber. Its scarlet beam blazes to life, casting a red glow over his features, disturbingly reminiscent of Han. Poe stares at it for a second, mesmerised. He retreats a few steps, gripping the hilt so tightly that his knuckles whiten.

 

Had Ben… returned it to her? Nothing makes sense.

 

“It isn’t mine,” she asserts, surprised at how easily the half-truth rolls off her tongue.

 

“Red! _His colour!_ ”

 

He swings the saber suddenly and she freezes, wide-eyed. It sings, a low-pitched vibrato, through the air between them. Maker, what is he _doing_? Wielding a dark Jedi weapon with her immobilised, his prisoner…Will he kill her? This is madness! Rey clenches her eyes shut, willing everything to disappear, hearing the electronic thrum of another swipe and feeling its faint heat as it passes close to her face.

 

“Turn it off, Poe,” she entreats quietly, cracking her eyelids open, fixating on the beam. She envisions disarming him. Pulling the saber from his rough hands into hers. Casting it across the cell, out of reach. Prising it free from his grip. The weapon doesn’t even twitch.

 

“He’s a beast, Rey! A maniac!” he booms, stalking back towards her, saber still alight. “And you’re… what? His pawn? His consort?”

 

“Please. Turn it off,” she murmurs, paralysed with fear. “Just listen to me, please. I did nothing wrong.”

 

“You disgust me,” he snarls, but – oh, thank the gods - deactivates the lightsaber, casting it to the floor as if it burns his palm. He storms to the other side of the cell, whirls on the ball of one foot, strides back.

 

Watching him pace back and forth, Rey considers another possibility for escape.

 

She focuses on her breathing – slow and measured, and stares him directly in the eye as he passes. “Poe. I am loyal to the Resistance. Always,” she says, straining to keep her voice steady. “You... will... remove these restraints.”

 

Another breath. She can do this. She’s done it before.

 

“And leave this cell. With the door open.”

 

“I... will... do no such thing,” he mocks, then violently kicks the weapon, sending it skittering across the deck with a jarring _clang_ as it strikes her cell bars. “ What else did he… _give_ you?” Poe’s features contort with ire. He does not wear jealousy well. She barely recognises this raving, unhinged stranger against whom she is powerless to defend herself. There is something particularly disquieting about the emphasis he places on the word `give’, the subtle thrust of his hips as he says it, his bared teeth.

 

Rey catches his gaze again. “You will remove these restraints.” She will need to isolate herself somewhere far away from him aboard the shuttle. Devise a plan of action for when they land. “And leave this cell with the door open.”

 

Unaffected, he advances on her again, bringing one meaty hand up to cradle the side of her face. Rey cringes and pulls against her stun cuffs; her shoulders smart at the stretch as her back strikes the bulkhead behind her. “You’re trying to use Jedi mind tricks on me?” he mutters breathily.

 

She doesn’t answer, wincing as his thumb brushes her earlobe.

 

“Wonder why it’s not working?”

 

Maybe, if she screams… maybe someone will come to her aid… Emjon… _anyone_.

 

“It’s old tech. Something we’ve kept in reserve to incapacitate Kylo Ren, when we take him prisoner.” Not _if_ , she notes with dismay. Captain Dameron, so self-assured. Kylo had captured him after Jakku, she remembers, tortured him and violated his thoughts. What manner of payback has Poe devised?

 

“Let me go,” she beseeches again.

 

“I never thought we’d be using it on his _whor_ -”

 

“Let me _go!_ ”

 

His rough knuckles graze up over the base of her throat, lifting the necklet slightly, then flick away. The heavy ring drops back onto her collarbones as he bows his forehead to hers. Whimpering, Rey twists her neck to one side, unable to lean away any further.

 

“Was it your idea? Hmm? To go to Seregar?” Poe’s brow, dampened with a sheen of perspiration, is warm against her temple. If she turned her head to face him now, she thinks their lips might meet. “Did you plan it together? You, and that...” He’s fuming, the cords of his neck clenched tight, his breathing a guttural rasp. “that _bastard_? If you can’t beat them, _join_ them, right? Was that why you went to that damn temple?”

 

Fine droplets of his saliva bead on her lips as he spits his accusations at her. She can’t bear the sensation. Without thinking, she licks them away.

 

It’s a mistake. The movement draws his attention to her mouth.

 

Before she can comprehend what is happening, Poe seizes her face, fingers clamping firmly over her cheekbones and jaw, and crushes his lips against hers.

 

Rey makes a muffled wail of protest, jerking her shoulders violently from side to side as much as her restraints allow. He will not yield. His kiss is impatient, desperate, insistent. She feels his hot tongue prying against the seam of her lips.

 

Near-hysterical now, she grasps the chains above her cuffed wrists, takes her full weight into her arms and swings both knees upward with as much strength as she can muster - directly into the apex of his thighs.

 

Poe’s reaction is immediate. He breaks the kiss with a groan and staggers backward, clutching at his groin with both hands. As he bends double, temporarily silenced, Rey begins to scream.

 

 

~

 

 

“So, where’s Karé?”

 

“Piloting the Griffin, with Jess.” Snap is barely awake, but his hand remains steady on the control yoke. “Cap’n Antilles didn’t want me getting distracted.”

 

Kaydel Ko Connix untwines her right bun, worrying at the plait with her fingers. Her present copiloting duties consist entirely of keeping Snap Wexley alert – their skeleton crew is already stretched too thin - but her mind is elsewhere. “Your missus could’ve been flying this thing while you get some shut-eye.”

 

The pilot checks his wrist-mounted chrono and yawns. “Less’n an hour before the cap takes over.”

 

“I could take over for a bit, if you want to retire early?” she offers. It’s already been an hour since she relieved the captain. _No_ _-_ _General,_ she corrects herself. She reaches for her comlink headset, reconsiders, and continues to fiddle with her blonde braid instead.

 

“What, and miss all this?” Snap teases, motioning toward the tumbling blue-white infinity through the transparisteel viewport. Hyperspace: mind-blowing the first time, monotonous the hundredth. Their view hasn’t changed in the past hour, though Kaydel knows they have traversed a couple of hundred parsecs. “Best lightshow in the universe.”

 

“You’re not safe to fly,” she protests.

 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, champ.” He cracks his knuckles and leans back in the chair. “Besides, you’re not rated for a light frigate.”

 

“I could track our progress and just follow the others? Not my fault we’re headed halfway across the galaxy. We should’ve gone back to Dulathia. It’s closer.”

 

“Too exposed. Karé voted for Sarq Twenty-Two.”

 

“What a surprise,” she jibes, distractedly touching the other bun. “You’d have finally gotten to meet the in-laws. Too close to Yavin, though.”

 

“Uh-huh.” Snap checks his chrono again. “Hey, you wanna know something funny? Guess what we _didn’t_ see at the synthefood mart on Nicale?”

 

“I don’t know… solid grub?” The crates of vita paste and nutripaste sachets that Snap’s section brought back will keep the entire squadron well-nourished for at least a couple of months, but she does not relish the thought of rehydrated pap at every meal.

 

He chuckles and strokes his beard. “Hey, protein cubes and pellets cost an arm and a leg these days.”

 

Kaydel shakes her head ruefully, wondering when tasteless stock-feed pellets became a luxury item, and how long it has been since any of them consumed a bona fide, organic feast. There are days when she would kill for a piece of fresh fruit, or a nerf-steak, medium-rare, paired with a nice glass of Corellian sap-wine.

 

“No, Lieutenant. What we missed was – our own ugly mugs. I mean, we wrap ourselves up like Sand People only to see our smiling faces holoprojected everywhere, like the daily special. Jess enjoys pretending she’s a Peekoine Opera singer, hiding from the paparazzi.”

 

“Yeah, I’ve seen her do that.” She shrugs. “Whatever gets the job done, I suppose. So… we’re not famous any more? That just a Baroonda thing?”

 

Snap raises his eyebrows enigmatically. “Maybe we’re just not so valuable now?” he quips. “How about Jerijador? We still the flavour of the month?”

 

She’d hated Jerijador. Teeming with insects. Every second vendor peddling shoe kits. Spaceship components – extravagantly expensive – furtively stuffed into coat pockets and satchels. No need for armed robbery; not this time. “I don’t think I saw us, either,” she comments, frowning. “You’re not suggesting… with the attack and all… that we’re presumed dead?”

 

“We can only hope.” He regards her sombrely, then returns to staring at the viewport.

 

They both sit in silence, bored with the humdrum spectacle ahead, until Kaydel notices his head drooping forward again. She elbows him lightly in the ribs. “Hey, Commander. Wake up.”

 

Snap jolts awake, sitting ramrod-straight in his chair for a second.

 

“You’re not safe to pilot,” she coaxes. “I don’t think any of us are, right now.”

 

“Couldn’t one of the newbies take the reins a while? They have some flight training, at least,” he mumbles, smiling apologetically. “No offence, Kay. Don’t want to hassle the cap ‘til we have to.”

 

“None taken, ace.” She twirls the plait around her finger. “They’re all guarding the POW.”

 

“All six of ‘em?”

 

She considers the comlink again. “Mmm-hmm, all of them.”

 

“What about Threnalli?”

 

“Gun turret. Running laserfight simulations, I’ll bet. He could take over ‘til Wedge’s shift?”

 

Snap nods. “Tell him I’ll dance at his wedding. He’ll be binge-watching Flip My Ship over the HoloNet again, just ask him. Would’ve been nice to enter Rey’s starhopper; that’s a fixer-upper, if ever I saw one… six recruits for that one little girl, you say?”

 

“The general thinks she’s double-crossed us.”

 

“Well, karabast to that. Overkill, much? She doesn’t need a kriffing entourage.” He yawns again. “She could even be flying for us right now, if Poe didn’t have his britches in a twist.”

 

“Aren’t you trusting?” He’s probably right, too, she thinks, remembering their miraculous escape from the crystal cave. Rey from nowhere – their newcomer at the time – levitating boulders to liberate them all, like a god. This bunkerbuster – _stars_ _,_ their whole damned fleet – would probably be space junk by now, if not for her mechanical expertise and tireless enthusiasm.

 

Snap shrugs. “Why not? She’s a good kid. Wrong place at the wrong time ‘n’all that. Poe’ll come to his senses.”

 

Kaydel does not share his confidence. Just hours ago she had stood guard, restraint collar in hand, while the newly inaugurated general frisked their duplicitous detainee for weapons and communicators. Rey had been unconscious, flat on her back in a cell. They’ve harboured POWs before, but she cannot remember such a… thorough pat-down before their imprisonment. The unedifying sight of Poe’s boorish hands roaming over the girl’s breasts, the curve of her waist, between her thighs, over every inch of her limp body, had made the lieutenant squirm uneasily.

 

Before Seregar, she had assumed – wrongly, it seems – that he and Rey were already an item, training together almost every night with those other two sweethearts.

 

She snatches up the headset and thumbs the PTT. “Threnalli? It’s Connix. Over.”

 

Static.

 

“Hey, C’ai? You there? It’s Connix.”

 

“Lieutenant?” At the tinkling of tinny HoloNet music behind his heavy Abednedish accent, Kaydel stifles a giggle, in spite of herself. “Threnalli. Over.”

 

“You’re needed in the cockpit. Sleepyhead here isn’t at the top of his game. Over.”

 

“On my way. Over.”

 

She glances nervously at Snap, covering the mouthpiece with two fingers. “Look, chug some caf or get some rest, okay?” she hisses. “I’m going back to the command centre. Via the brig. I think… I think Poe’s in one of his moods.”

 

He nods. “Off you go.”

 

Threnalli high-fives her as she passes. Kaydel marches out through the cockpit access tunnel, the cadence of her stride accelerating as she makes her way across the narrow midsection of the frigate.

 

 

~

 

 

No one comes.

 

She is certain that the Bith at least, with his ultra-sensitive hearing, can perceive her screaming even through the closed duralloy door, but she and Poe remain alone in the cell; her, collared and chained, him rocking on his side on the deck, moaning expletives and cupping his loins. It takes several minutes before her captor is able to roll onto all fours, then stagger unsteadily to his feet. He mumbles something – drowned out by her screams – then simply observes from a safer distance, one eyebrow cocked, as if patiently waiting for an outbursting toddler to overtire itself.

 

“Don’t… don’t come near me,” Rey warns croakily, swinging herself back slightly, ready to lash out again.

 

The general's demeanor seems subdued compared with a moment ago. Visibly shaking, he hangs his head and runs his tongue over his lips, fingers fidgeting. “I… I thought...” he confides, then sucks in a breath, perhaps thinking better of it.

 

“You thought wrong.”

 

Poe meets her gaze for a second, crestfallen. “I thought wrong,” he echoes in a thin whisper.

 

Rey watches him cautiously. Perhaps she can make him see reason. Keep him talking. Bring him to his senses. Convince him that she is still on his side. She can not escape the notion that a wrong word, a misstep in conversation, might set him off again. She wants to cry her heart out – it feels as though she has done nothing but weep for days – but her gritty eyes refuse, dried up like desiccated sponge-moss.

 

“It’s just that… my entire life… we’ve been at war,” he rasps to the deck. “With the Galactic Empire, and now, with the First Order. My parents saw how the galaxy was suffering under Empire rule… Mother was an Alliance pilot in the Civil War. Father was a sergeant; one of the Pathfinders. Both heroes among the Rebellion’s army.”

 

“You’ve told me before,” Rey replies guardedly. “Shara Bey. And -” She searches her memory for a name. “Kes. Kes Dameron.”

 

He nods. “It’s how they met.” Poe offers her a small, defeated smile. His chocolaty eyes shine in the low light, she notices, without the same harshness as Ben’s. “I hardly knew them. Always fighting for their cause. They fought together to save the galaxy… and when Mother was killed...” He swivels to face the cell bars, giving her his back. His shoulders rise and fall with his jagged breathing.

 

Rey listens, waiting for him to say more.

 

“And when _you_ joined us… even after Crait, when you freed us from that cave, those few of us who survived, even then...”

 

“I’m still with you, Poe,” she soothes.

 

“...I had hope. That all of this isn’t for nothing. That they hadn’t died for nothing.” Poe turns back, his stance loosening a little, eyes darting to her face. “That we… _we_ … were building something here.” His words hold a different inflection than before; it sounds like a confession.

 

“Are they… Finn… Rose..?” Rey dares to ask, and his entire countenance softens.

 

“They’re all alive, Rey. All of them. Everyone was off-world, when...”

 

She breathes a sigh of relief, shoulders slumping.

 

“Except for General Organa Solo. No trace of her.”

 

Rey nods and presses her lips together, debating whether he is mollified enough now to release her, if she begs again.

 

Poe takes a step closer. “But you knew that.”

 

A swooping uproar of voices interrupts them. Sharp footsteps rapidly approach the doorway and Lieutenant Connix bursts into the brig, hauling one of the recruits behind her by the fabric of his flight suit like a reluctant child.

 

 

~

 

 

“ _You!_ ” Kaydel bellows, jabbing an accusing finger at Poe. “We’re relieving you _right_ now, General. You know very well that interrogating POWs unaccompanied is a breach of protocol. We’ll watch the prisoner. And _you_ -” she turns her attention to the Bith - “You hear that kind of racket, someone needs your assistance, no matter what! Do you understand?” Hopefully, the five other recruits loitering by the tunnel mouth can hear her loud and clear.

 

“Yes, Lieutenant,” drawls the shamefaced-looking Bith, hanging his domed head.

 

“You’re excused,” she commands disdainfully to the others, and they shuffle out of sight.

 

Poe is not finished. “So are you, Lieutenant Connix,” he grits out, chest puffed, eyes never leaving Rey.

 

Kaydel observes the lightsaber that Finn had entrusted to Poe resting in one corner of the cell, Rey’s reddened, bound wrists, her rigid body all but suspended from an overhead pipe, the way she is arching away from the general as much as her restraints permit. What would have transpired, had she not intervened? This terrified, defenseless prisoner is a shadow of the soldier whose extraordinary abilities saved the last of the Resistance so long ago.

 

Without further deliberation, she forges ahead, squeezing her petite frame between the two of them, her back to Rey like a human shield. Hands on hips, she glares up at the infuriated general, silently daring him to dispute her.

 

“I _said_ -”

 

“And _I_ said _you are relieved_ , General Dameron. Else we’re staying _right_ _here_ with you.” She shoots another dark look at the Bith recruit. “We will not let the prisoner out of our sight.” Maybe – just for a moment – she can embody some of Leia’s commanding presence. If she fakes it. She’s shorter than both of them, and fully expects Poe to simply swat her aside as though she were a msquito.

 

Miraculously, Poe takes a step back and glances about the cell, perhaps second-guessing himself.

 

“Get some sleep, General,” Kaydel orders, with considerably more authority than she feels. “She’s not going anywhere. Worst case scenario, even the escape pod isn’t fuelled up.” She has no idea whether it’s fuelled up. She expects Poe doesn’t, either.

 

“Fine.” He retreats again, wringing his hands. “You’ll watch her,” he instructs.

 

She nods. “Like a shriek-hawk.”

 

“Don’t remove the kriffing collar. The collar _stays_.”

 

“Yes, sir. The collar stays.” He’s actually leaving. Snap will be proud. She hopes there won’t be adverse ramifications later for her insubordinate behaviour, but right now, she cares little either way. Her ostensible assurances are for his own good. There’s a witness, at least, if she’s ever court-martialled. “Get some sleep,” she repeats emphatically.

 

Poe turns and plods wearily out of Rey’s cell. He is almost gone when the foolish prisoner speaks to him one last time.

 

“I’m so sorry… about Leia,” she mumbles.

 

He looks back, his expression broken. “Me too,” he replies creakily, then disappears through the bulkhead door.

 

Her apprehension eased in his absence, Kaydel studies their prisoner of war. She is a pale, quivering mess, her clothes shredded and muddy, the visible skin bestrewn with cuts and contusions. Clearly not a woman who consorted with the enemy and came gallivanting back, unscathed. Her glazed eyes barely focus on the blonde lieutenant right in front of her.

 

“Rey?” she begins tentatively.

 

Rey scrunches her eyelids shut. “Unbind me, please...” she whispers. “Please… my shoulders hurt. Please, just...”

 

“I don’t have a key, honey,” Kaydel replies, suddenly feeling like the cruellest tyrant known to mankind. The poor woman looks close to passing out.

 

“There’s a lightsaber… somewhere…? You could...”

 

Like hell, will she be using a lightsaber. “Hey, recruits!” she barks at the doorframe instead. “Get in here this instant!”

 

“Ma’am?” replies one of the boys. They’re still guarding the brig. Of course they are. Mindless moof-milkers. Poe’s orders, she imagines.

 

“I need a fusioncutter, now.”

 

“General Dameron said -”

 

“I don’t _care_ what General Dameron said, Recruit. I’m in charge here. Fusioncutter. _Now._ Or you’re on your own as soon as we reach Bri’n. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that every single one of you has breached protocol, allowing anyone to interrogate a POW alone.”

 

Within minutes, they have blessedly returned with her tool. She makes short work of slicing through the links between Rey’s ankles, then – balancing precariously on a bench - the binders tethering her wrists. The moment she dismounts, the dishevelled brunette almost collapses against her, resting her quivering arms atop Kaydel’s shoulders for support. She smells of crushed foliage and ash, acrid sweat and fear.

 

The lieutenant wraps her arms around Rey, half embracing, half trying to keep her upright. To her surprise, the Jedi Knight returns her hug weakly.

 

“Thank you, Kaydel,” she whispers.

 

“I -” The wave of guilt is almost overwhelming. She let this happen to her own comrade-in-arms, snapped the collar around Rey’s neck herself, stood idly by and let Poe… she would have punched the general square in the nose, had he tried to `pat _her_ down’ like that. She can’t do enough for this frazzled warrior who has saved her skin at least once – probably umpteen times – during their short term together. “I really don’t have the key – Poe does – but I’ll cut the links as close as I can, okay? The cuff parts’ll have to wait, for now. I don’t want to burn you. And… as long as you promise to put it back on when we get to Bri’n, I have a spare remote for the neurothingy.”

 

“The collar stays,” interjects the Bith, but he’s mumbling, still staring contritely at the deck.

 

“It’s a torture device, Recruit,” Kaydel argues, although - truth be told - she is perplexed as to its purpose. She had expected Rey to be shackled to something with it, but instead their prisoner is merely wearing it like a royal carcanet. It looks heavy. “When we land, I’ll put it back on her, if I must.”

 

“Are they really all alive?” Rey asks.

 

Kaydel pauses, recalling the uncharacteristically affectionate welcome she and her modest crew received upon their return from Jerijador, dumbstruck at the sight of the explosion crater where their base of operations should have been. And how wholeheartedly they themselves engaged in it hours later, when Snap, Wedge and Lando arrived back from the moons of Baroonda. How long had Rey been unconscious? _Oh…_ “Yes, hun. All present and accounted for, except General Organa. We ran a lifeform scan five klicks in every direction from the blast site.”

 

Rey’s face crumples and she hugs Kaydel a little tighter. “She’s dead.”

 

“We guessed that.” Having the Jedi reaffirm her suspicions somehow makes their whole abysmal predicament so much more real. They are all cracking at the seams. “Whatever you’ve been through… I’m so sorry.”

 

“I want to talk to Finn,” Rey implores. “Please, let me speak with Finn. I need to know he’s okay.”

 

Eventually, Kaydel has no doubt, their new general will see straight - but in the meantime, she wouldn’t mind locking _him_ in the brig for a while. Not that anyone else aboard this shuttle would ever permit it. Witch-hunts do not win wars. This poor, wretched woman.

 

“Absolutely. You can use my comlink headset,” she offers. “Finn is on the CR-ninety with Ematt. Talk to him for as long as you like… just know that anyone on the Resistance channel can hear you.” She reaches to extricate her plaited pigtails from the device. “Then we’ll get you cleaned up – a shower and some fresh clothes. A hot meal.” _Of mouthwatering paste_ _and energy pudding_ , she refrains to add. “And a decent sleep. You can have the bosun’s quarters. I’ll stand guard myself.” Releasing Rey, she fumbles in her trouser pocket for the remote. “We’ll have Peazy take a quick look at you, too. Patch you up.”

 

“I’m all right,” Rey assures, looking far from it. Her metallic neckpiece clicks faintly as Kaydel thumbs the remote control. From the doorway, five penitent recruits peek in at them. “Don’t be too hard on him.”

 

“On Poe?” She grasps the collar, easing it open over its hinge.

 

Rey nods. “He’s suffered so much loss - everything he’s strived to achieve. The entire Resistance is in his hands now. And he had… misconceptions.”

 

“Ugh, don’t give me that `he knoweth not what he does’ druk,” Kaydel chides gently, lifting the glinting necklet away. For one incomprehensible second, she has a flashback to her childhood, as bright and vivid as if it were yesterday: waking in total darkness, cracking open the heavy pleated curtains beside her sleeper, and feeling warm rays of brilliant morning sunlight come filtering through, transforming the turquoise flex-carpet of her bedroom into a shimmering ocean.

 

 _Like a god_ , she thinks again. But it is a mortal woman whose waist she wraps her arm around, accompanying her from the brig.

 

 

~

 

 

“Wait.”

 

Lieutenant Connix stills and peers up at her.

 

“I left something behind.”

 

The blonde officer frowns suspiciously, but unhooks her arm from Rey’s midriff. Stumbling back across the deck grating, Rey stoops to retrieve the silver cylinder from the corner of the first cell.

 

As she reaches for it, the weapon shifts a fraction, then leaps into her waiting palm.

 

Connix has followed her partway, offering an apologetic smile from the entrance to the cell as Rey lurches unsteadily back to her. “Honey, as much as I know Poe’s being a barvy ass… I don’t think he’d be too pleased if I let you have a lightsaber.”

 

Rey catches her gaze and levels a stare directly into her warm caramel-brown eyes. “There was no lightsaber,” she murmurs, barely trying, a note of desperation in her voice.

 

Connix’s face is suddenly blank. “There was no lightsaber,” she parrots quietly, then wraps one arm supportively around Rey’s waist again, escorting her back to the access tunnel.

 

 

~

 

 

The instant she is sequestered safely away from prying eyes in the bosun’s quarters, Rey settles cross-legged alongside the cot, closes her eyes and stretches out, fingers of her consciousness questing for the ship’s inhabitants. She touches Connix first; standing guard by door, mulling over insubordinacy and her next mug of caf. C’ai Threnalli and Wedge Antilles are next, secluded in the cockpit, tracking their course and debating in stilted Abednedish about upgrading the bunkerbuster’s hyperdrive. She examines the astrogator panel through the captain’s eyes: they are bound for Bri'n, four hundred and thirty parsecs away, eight standard hours for the fleet.

 

So far, so good.

 

There are six recruits in the command centre, five of them disassembling and cleaning weapons. She catches a lilting tune from Emjon’s flute, to hearten the others and allay their anxiety. He is daydreaming about joining Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodules, and wondering what awaits them on Bri'n. Below deck, Snap dozes in the crew’s quarters, snoring like a kath hound.

 

Poe is also asleep, in the general’s bunk.

 

 _Don’t leave your room,_ Finn had warned. She hadn’t said a single word about Poe – not with at least six other pilots tuned into the Resistance channel – but he must have heard the trepidation in her voice. _Get some rest, but stay right there until we land. I’ll come get you_ _straight away_ _._

 

Eleven sentient beings aboard the bunkerbuster, like living, breathing power cells, all bursting with energy and electricity. If she wills it, she could drain every last one of them, as much as she desires. Else she could dismiss Finn’s warning, storm through the bowels of the shuttle right now and blow the duralloy door off the general’s quarters, wiping Poe’s covetous, overwrought mind clean before it can puzzle out what she is doing.

 

But she won't. It's back, it’s all come back, and she’s washed, and her stomach is full.

 

For now, that’s enough.

 

“Finn?” she murmurs into the comlink, crawling into bed. “Are you still there?”

 

A pause. Then, “Hey, peanut. Still here. You all right?” His voice is warm, slurred with fatigue. He yawns – loudly – and makes that phlegmy snuffling sound that he makes when he’s tired, and Rey misses him terribly.

 

“I’m okay. How is Rose doing?”

 

“Better. She’s finally asleep.” Rose’s periodic spells of nausea started during their supply run, Finn had recounted, and escalated to near-constant vomiting after their return to Seregar. Expired ration-packs, he justified, though he apparently had a stronger stomach. “She kept a little water down. We’ve got purification powder now, at least.”

 

“Good. You sound as though you could use some sleep, too.”

 

“I could.” Rey hears something shift in the background, fabric on fabric. “But someone’s gotta watch over our best engineer.”

 

“I want to see her, too, as soon as we land. Will you bring her with you?” Rey’s voice breaks, just a small crack. “If she’s up to it?”

 

“Sure. She was worried about you.” A yowling Wookiee sounds faintly behind him. “So am I. And so’s Chewie.”

 

“Leia’s dead,” she blurts out.

 

Several beats of static. “Are you sure?” Finn asks. “Did you feel it… in the Force?”

 

She bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying. Not now – she needs to hold on. Just a little longer. “Yes,” she replies, to Finn and to the others who are no doubt listening inquisitively to their conversation. She must tread with caution, calculate every word, if she is to have any chance of convincing them of her innocence. “I felt it days before I could get back, even at warp speed,” she broadcasts. “I was too late. I don’t know how they found us. If only I had been there sooner...”

 

“Would it have made any difference?”

 

A Shyriiwook growl interrupts their other listeners’ polite silence; Chewie, no longer content with eavesdropping. _No one’s blaming you,_ _kid_ _._

 

What _would_ she have done – plucked a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer from the starlit sky between her fingers, like a sandfly? “I don’t know,” she whispers.

 

She cannot let herself become the divisive force that drives apart the last vestiges of the Resistance. Their saviour; their traitor. Bri'n is eight standard hours away. Eight hours of purgatory. Eight hours, to formulate a course of action to placate Poe and whomever else views her with suspicion.

 

“Get some sleep. I’ll be there as soon as we land.”

 

“I’ll try, Finn. Goodnight.” The farewell seems bizarre with the polychromatic lightshow streaming through the viewport by her cot, but as calming as it is to hear her closest friend’s voice in her earpiece across the vastness of space, she does not dare press her luck with the lieutenant.

 

“’Night, Rey.”

 

Detangling the comlink headset from damp tresses of her hair, Rey sets it aside and curls into a foetal position, hugging her knees to her chest. The iridescent swell and flow of light through the viewport tells her the shuttle is accelerating now through hyperspace. She presses her palm to it, fingertips faintly brushing against cool transparisteel.

 

 _Ben,_ she thinks, _I’m sorry._

 

He’s out there, somewhere, blinded by rage and grief, transformed into some unknowable atrocity that hurled her across the pulverized wreckage of Seregar, seized ahold of her mind with contemptuous ease, attacked her with preternatural speed, and still… could not bring himself to kill her. He has become something infinitely stronger than the man with whom she had fought, back to back, on the Supremacy. The astral thread is faint and necrotic, enshrouded within a roiling, unctuous mire of the darkness that has consumed him whole and creeps over her now like an icy chill, numbing her senses, as she reaches for it.

 

 _Please forgive me,_ she whispers into the abyss. _Come back to me, Ben_.

 

Alone in the bosun’s sleeper, Rey cocoons herself in her own embrace; it offers no comfort. Her grief pours out in a flood of uncontrollable tears. It feels as though they will never stop.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As an early Xmas present, I bring you [Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodules](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oMUOfFxuetw)


	16. ...Na4!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is something wondrously intimate about this, holding her from light years away, their hushed whispers to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild suicidal themes. Skip this chapter entirely if you are triggered.

 

_No one, least of all Master Skywalker, believed Kira’s justification that she was just roughhousing during hand-to-hand combat sparring. Her punishment for assailing her fellow padawan was exclusion from training, until such time as she presented Skywalker with a complete handwritten translation of the Rammahgon into Ryl. It would instil in her a sense of equanimity and strengthen her self-discipline, he explained firmly._

  


_Denied the use of a datapad, she had only a multi-volume Twi’leki dictionary and an ancient astromech droid – whose nonstop whinging beeps that its former goldenrod counterpart was an interpreter were of little help – as resources, to convert one antiquated language into another entirely foreign one. Ben harassed Byt to assist her and expediate her return to the group, laughing off his arguments about puny humans and their unenlightened ways, until he begrudgingly relented. After seven days and twenty durasheets of unfinished manuscript, Skywalker lifted her penance, but in their spare moments together, Byt continued to teach her his native tongue._

  


_Soniee’s left eye is bruised and swollen to a slit where Kira smashed her fist into it. Ben would gladly blacken the other one, but instead he finds himself reaching for her hand, just like he always,_ always _does. The Keshiri bats him away dismissively; her face softens into something that looks almost like pity. He thinks that he likes this even less than her usual impatient contempt._

  


“ _It’s just sex, kiddo,” she sniggers, anchoring his wandering hands by his side with the Force and lowering her glorious, powerfully-built, half-nude frame to straddle him._

  


_Their act of fornication itself is not memorable enough to feature in this particular dream. They have done other things together – wonderful, obscene things – but tonight she is only scratching an itch._

  


_Ben doesn’t know what he loathes more, being forcibly restrained, or that he allows Soniee to do this time and time again._

  


_It pleases some deeply primal part of him to feel her weight grinding against him with no rhythm, exquisite wet friction, filling the night air with their slick, filthy sounds. The dull pleasure of her hands on his bare skin, clenching his shoulders while she rocks her pelvis into his. Listening to her harsh, ragged breaths build into moans, not caring who hears them. Watching her breasts bounce and her pupils blow wide as she rides him to her climax. She only relinquishes her Force-hold and allows him to dig his fingers into her gyrating hips at the end, shuddering through her orgasm until she collapses on top of him, panting, sweaty and satiated._

  


_He tentatively slides his hands across the broad planes of her back, clutching her to his chest,_ _r_ _elishing the physical contact_ _._ _His entire body throbs_ _deliciously_ _with the aftershocks of his own pleasure and he_ _quivers_ _against her_ _. But just as soon, she has_ _squirmed_ _free of his attempted embrace,_ _shov_ _ed him aside and is on her feet, discreetly wiping his spend from her thigh and redressing. He reaches for her again without thinking. He wants… he doesn’t know what he wants. He wants_ more.

  


_Ben’s supplicating gesture is answered with a perfunctory nod. “’Til next time, Solo,” she croons, and pads away softly, leaving him propped up on his elbows, naked and disregarded in the loamy earth behind the Temple._

  


_He has peered into her mind and knows that there are others. He feels… dirty, humiliated, as though he has partaken of his brothers’ leavings._

  


_So this is sex, he tells himself, something men will lie and betray and murder for. Complete subjugation to another. As unnecessary and dispensable as shipping-grade fuel._

  


_Some time of her choosing, when she becomes bored with the others, Soniee will want him again and he will acquiesce. He hates himself for it. That fiendish, regal drawl inside from his childhood that grows louder with every passing day promises infinite power; if he submits to the dark side, he can take whatever he wants. Everything, from anyone. The Keshiri schutta and her lacklustre fumbling is beneath him; the Temple, the Jedi religion and all of it, all beneath him._

  


_Just a subtle caress._

  


_Ben listens. It is a beacon of hope._

  


Kylo jolts awake. His sweat-damp sheets cling to his body, wet locks of hair plastered to his brow. His eyes are crusted, cheeks stiff with dried tears. And he’s hard. Bitter self-loathing gnaws at his insides.

  


This cannot continue.

  


Fracking Al-Jinn and her spineless attempts at Dun Mőch, stirring long-forgotten demons from their slumber. If he could butcher her all over again, he would in a heartbeat.

  


Leia’s pearlescent ring rests atop the bedside table alongside his lightsaber. He studies the weapon for a long moment, wondering how much longer he can endure before he turns it on himself.

  


  


~

  


  


Holding the control yoke steady, General Hux stares contemplatively into the infinity of space through the cockpit viewport of an unmarked Upsilon-class command shuttle. Piloting this craft is a menial task, unworthy of a meritorious First Order General, but one necessitated by the ignominious Kylo Ren.

  


Within the space of a two-minute holoprojection, the soon-to-be Supreme Leader became a two hundred thousand credit fugitive, and his pilot and co-pilot were slumped dead in their seats. Killed calmly by Hux’s blasterfire before their feeble minds grasped that they harboured the most valuable individual in the galaxy.

  


He prides himself on having the foresight to depart the Finalizer almost immediately after the Council meeting, having manually disabled both identification transponders aboard the shuttle. Minimise exposure. An insurance policy, lest Grand Admiral Sloane’s scheme fail to transpire. Ren’s Force-sorcery is an arcane, unfathomable quantity with which Hux can never reckon.

  


He will not be cuckolded by some contumacious bitch, nor ever again allow anyone to control him remotely like an okari junk-puppet. Yes, he has figured her out. _Thin as a slip of paper_ , indeed.

  


A fleet of fifty Sun Crushers, built from hand-drawn schematics from the former Imperial Department of Military Research, is stockpiled at the Bilbringi Shipyard. Requisitioned in person by General Hux, they report. Enough to lay siege several times over to every planetary system that has not conceded to First Order rule. His engineers are amassing the resources to build the hundred more he has apparently ordered – to what end, they have grave concerns. A cold sweat erupted on his brow while Major Baron Vonreg apprised how they followed every last detail of verbal instructions Hux has no memory of giving.

  


The Major did not hide his relief when Hux commanded him to cease construction immediately. Each individual deployment would have been a suicide mission. He hopes that Kylo Ren tore Al-Jinn limb from limb for this; the dark lord’s final kill for him.

  


For now.

  


He will devise a way to claw back all that has been lost. The supplies aboard a command shuttle will sustain a crew of five personnel for fourteen standard days. Ample time. Surely there are those who would value his encyclopaedic knowledge of the internal machinations of the First Order over his bounty.

  


He must seek refuge, as far from the reaches of the First Order as possible. But where?

  


  


~

  


  


“Supreme Leader,” Captain Yago’s voice trumpets through the comlink. “Your Knight requests an audience with you, my lord. Primary command bridge.”

  


It’ll be Kopecz, to remind him what a miserably inadequate human being he is. Can’t control his own army. Can’t bend the Force to his will, or cheat death. Incapable of anything other than chaos and self-destruction.

  


Pacing around a holotank on the combat bridge, Kylo ignores Yago and carries on plotting the First Order-controlled trade routes, running a stylus through the three-dimensional star map, identifying planets and sectors from memory. It is mindless work, a task no doubt already coordinated and reviewed by his subordinates countless times, but is at least a distraction from other matters.

  


Training with Marksman-H remotes and ASP-19 battle droids has become a nonentity in the wake of recent events. The Finalizer’s quartermaster requisitioned several hundred for the Supreme Leader’s sparring gym during his absence; Kylo reduced each and every one of them to sputtering metallic waste within one standard hour. Three neural disruptors in the Supreme Leader’s quarters aboard the Conqueror had suffered the same fate.

  


Karking _traitors_.

  


Al Jinn’s lightsaber pike is holstered securely at his back, but he dares not use it, lest it have retained some vestige of her sickening, heinous aura.

  


There was a perfectly serviceable holoprojector on the combat bridge until thirty minutes ago, when he declined his Knight’s last attempt at communication by slashing his lightsaber blade through it.

  


The Perlemian Trade Route and the Corellian Run service the majority of the conquered regions, with peripheral planets sustained by scout shuttles or smaller interplanetary exchanges. Bothawui and every other Mid- and Outer Rim planet that will not submit to First Order rule, he observes, are excluded from all supply routes. The major runs both intercept the Abrion Sector, a large group of planets with fertile agricultural land, which export foodstuffs and fine wines. This domain is Kluub Ren’s; one of his only two remaining Knights.

  


He hones in on Ukio, Kluub’s station, on his datapad. The agriworld began as the breadbasket of the Core Worlds, but now supplies most of the known galaxy. Historically, it has been a prized target for pirates and criminals solely for its valuable produce, and to Kylo’s knowledge, has always been heavily defended as a result. Confoundingly, however, no military personnel have been deployed to the sector in two solar cycles, yet exports have trebled. An anomaly already flagged for investigation.

  


He scans reams of military reports from the past solar cycle. The vast majority of deployments have been in response to the insurrection of slaves on planets under established military rule, from nonviolent civil resistance to acts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare.

  


Only a small few have been to quash criminal activity, even if Kopecz claims that criminal syndicates are the First Order’s greatest threat. If anyone is left alive on these renegade worlds, it means the Order’s supply freighters are being intercepted and compromised – yet not a single incident is documented. He remembers Hux’s insouciant disregard for such matters. Crimson Dawn and so many others provide warships and weaponry in times of emergency, and in return, their shadowports operate unchecked; a symbiosis of sorts.

  


Since the Battle of Crait, the Resistance has never presented any appreciable threat. Ikkrukk was a test. Not even worthy of the Supreme Leader’s presence. The full force of the Resistance’s paltry army triumphed over a single, sacrificial Maxima-A class heavy cruiser already destined for a starship graveyard. They’d amassed maybe two hundred soldiers by then; the First Order swiftly culled that back down to a few dozen. A pyrrhic victory for the Resistance. He wonders why Hux continued to pursue them so doggedly: a personal vendetta, perhaps, or a perceived opportunity for self-aggrandizement.

  


The First Order has a restive galaxy to tame; one that has been plunged into chaos since the demise of the New Republic. It seems an insurmountable charge for just one man. Kylo senses the weight of the universe resting on his shoulders, gruellingly heavy, and there is nothing he can do to get out from under it. He could no sooner bottle up the oceans of Mon Cala than contain the bedlam that his dominion has become.

  


_Rey… I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy._

  


How naive he had been, expecting to have a galaxy of his own design without her by his side. He had offered Rey the two things most precious to him: the teachings of the Force, and the entire universe. She wanted neither. He mustn’t brood over how differently these past months might have played out if she had accepted his hand.

  


On Crait, he had demonstrated the devastating firepower of the First Order, crushed the Resistance – then kneeled before her like a beggar wanting scraps. The new sovereign ruler, humbled before a scavenger.

  


As the weeks and months after that final connection elapsed, Kylo had held on to hope – a bright star in a suffocatingly dark universe. Should Rey ever wake to him studying her sleeping form, or reverently stroking her hair – those few times he plucked up the courage to actually touch her – she would smile. It would be a beginning. And maybe someday, when some sense of normalcy returned – if such a thing exists - they might rekindle whatever sparked between them on Ahch-To.

  


A fatuous fantasy.

  


But a life without that delusion is unbearable. His stomach still smarts where she drove the edge of Pla Ren’s blade into it. He has not tried to heal the wound. He deserves every last one of them, to be marked for the innumerable atrocities he has committed.

  


“Supreme Leader.” It’s Yago. Again. “Your Knight, sir...”

  


He hurls the kriffing comlink into the wall and opens a file of Ukian trade and profit reports for the second quarter. The combat bridge crew studiously ignore him, staring at their screens.

  


  


~

  


  


Sleep eludes him.

  


Kylo lies awake on the black shimmersilk sheets of his expansive sleeper, fixated on his weapon. He stares until it burns an image into his retinae, and he can see its negative projected onto the lacquered black walls of his chamber when he looks away.

  


Both of his parents, and his mentors in the darkness and light alike, all dead by his hand. So many things left unsaid. The galaxy is in chaos and he is powerless to fix it. Four of his disloyal Knights of Ren, slain; the others shrouded in suspicion. He feels stripped raw, left mourning a life he didn’t know he needed.

  


_Old man - did you come back to say you forgive me? To save my soul?_

  


Skywalker’s heartless retort had filled him with fear. _No._ He was there to clean up the mess he had created. Played his former padawan for a fool. And he’d failed – the Resistance _had_ died that day.

  


He pictures his future self moving throughout his days, a shadow of a man, existing but not living. A life of absolute power, and solitude, and misery. Remembered patterns. Mechanical, habitual repetition. He should end it now. Whatever awaits him in the afterlife, he hopes it is just retribution for all those he has wronged. He will never be able to atone for all of his sins.

  


Kylo’s entire life has entailed fighting in one form or another, but now, at the helm of a corrupt empire, there is no adversary left to fight. None but himself.

  


“Ben.”

  


His hand, reaching for the lightsaber, stills.

  


“Ben, I’m sorry…” Her hushed voice again, thick with unshed tears.

  


He doesn’t turn around. “Get out of my fracking bed,” he snarls under his breath.

  


There’s no response, but after several moments he feels fine tremors though the sleeper as Rey begins to cry quietly. He has seen her weep before, unashamedly, but never like this – it is more than crying, the kind of desolate sobbing that comes from a person drained of all hope. She is curled within herself, contained and subdued, as if she is trying to hide it. His mattress indents under her slight weight.

  


Which of them opened the connection, he doesn’t know. Perhaps it is the Force itself that deigns to bring the last Jedi to the Jedi Killer now, at his darkest hour.

  


Listening to her cry is more than he can stand. If he still had a heart, it would shatter into pieces. He needs her to be quiet. Anything, to make her settle. The red astral thread between them sparks and pulses with their shared heartbeat.

  


“Rey, stop,” he pleads, softer this time, but she doesn’t stop. If she even notices him there.

  


Kylo slides cautiously across the sheets until he is behind her, not quite touching, his chest almost against the line of her back. Locks of her loose chestnut hair tickle the underside of his chin. He carefully skims her mind through the bond; she is bone-weary and grief-stricken, her Force signature dimmed from its usual self. His hand hovers uneasily above her petite frame for a moment, seeking to offer comfort – something entirely foreign to him - then settles lightly on the crest of her hip.

  


Registering his proximity, his touch - she stiffens. Her thoughts are suddenly laced with panic; she expects that he will strike her, or worse. The idea makes him want to hide his face in shame.

  


“I won’t hurt you, Rey,” he murmurs into her hair, blinking back tears. “I could never hurt you.” Her pain is as palpable as his own.

  


There’s an undertone of hurt and mistrust in her voice. “But you _tried_... on Crait…”

  


He frowns, remembering. The rebel base, the speeders, the escape pods… kneeling, watching her escape with the others.

  


“I let you go,” he contests, but there’s a note of uncertainty that even he can hear.

  


“I was on the Falcon,” she argues hoarsely. “Over the salt flats. When you ordered them to open fire on us.”

  


His heart skips a beat. _Blast that piece of junk out of the sky!_ “…I didn’t know.” He isn’t even certain whether that would have changed anything. Not then.

  


“And… at Seregar…”

  


The silence hangs heavily between them. Both know they had ample opportunity to slaughter the other and could not convince themselves to do it. Even after consecrating himself to the darkness, she was still his stray sunbeam, pouring light into the cracks in his soul.

  


“Why didn’t you kill me?” she whispers.

  


Because she is the single most precious thing to him in the universe, he thinks, his throat tightening. “Why didn’t you kill _me_?” he counters softly.

  


He fully expects her to shove him away and forbid him from ever, _ever_ touching her again and sever the connection for good. But as they lie silently together, her shoulders begin to tremble as she wells up and weeps again, her tears soaking into his pillow.

  


Her thoughts are unguarded. She is afraid for her future and for his, and that she has already destroyed this fragile thing between them. Her grief over Leia is crippling, moreso that she has not allowed herself to mourn until now; the general who was more family to her than her own rotgut-swilling parents. Rey was motherless, and Leia, made childless by her son’s defection – any they’d found each other. _Sometimes our families are chosen by fate, not by blood_ , Leia once professed. A heartsick woman who endured the unendurable, withstanding the losses of her husband, her brother and her son to Kylo’s selfish, obsessive pursuit of power.

  


She needs to be with someone now, to mourn. Anyone.

  


Anyone who will not hurt her.

  


The grief Kylo has tried so hard to damp down with research and military protocol boils to the surface. He shuts his eyes tight, sorrow surging with every expelled breath as he grinds his teeth and wills himself not to shed tears again. Not now. Not in front of _her_. She is brushing against his mind in return and he opens to her, just a sliver; he expects she will see the numbness pounding his brain and the emptiness in his heart, and doesn’t care.

  


The mattress dipping under his weight already has Rey’s small frame angled towards him. She relaxes, letting herself roll into the hollow against his chest, and he tightens his bare hand on her hipbone. It anchors him in a way he hardly understands. He can feel her now along the entire length of his body, solid and warm, and although he _knows_ she’s not really here with him, it’s soothing. Disarming.

  


“I loved her,” Rey confesses. “I wish I’d had the chance to tell her.”

  


_Me, too_. He never imagined Leia would have reciprocated. Not until the end - when it was too late. His vision fogs over, picturing all that he has destroyed, all that he has lost. Rey adjusts herself, snuggling deeper into the warm curve of his body and nestling her head beneath his chin.

  


“I never would have given the order,” he confesses huskily. “I… couldn’t…”

  


Something cracks inside without warning and he digs his fingers into her hip, clinging to his last lifeline, no longer trying to stifle his grief. It keeps coming in waves, engulfing and overwhelming. Hot tears carve a scalding trail from the corners of his eyes, down his temple, into his pillow. He has lost everything. Even _her_. His large frame shudders against her back and jostles her as he buries his face in her soft hair, silently crying in earnest.

  


He clutches at Rey like a drowning man to a life raft and together, they grieve the closest person to a mother either of them has ever known.

  


  


~

  


  


When the flood of tears has finally run dry, he feels her calloused fingers slide delicately over his. Rey’s featherlight touch is a balm and a torture, all at once; he can’t recall the last time he let anyone touch him without his gloves. No, it was on the island – the one from her dreams, by an open fire, in a secluded stone hut. For one illuminating, life-altering instant, their hands had clasped across the universe; he saw her past, and she, his future, as clear as daylight. And now, that silken touch again that makes his skin sing, and the wispy, fragmented visions it evokes.

  


Kylo freezes; all of the air in his lungs rushes out in a gasp.

  


A thatched cottage beside an orchard, shadows elongating in the setting sun.

  


Peppering soft kisses over a ripe, swollen belly, sensing the life within that thrills and terrifies him. The life they have created together.

  


Securing tiny booted feet, one in each fist. A miniature, wriggling body perched astride his broad shoulders, hands batting at his hair, urging him onward.

  


Rey’s mischievous laughter ringing out as he chases her through verdant skycorn fields. How he has missed that laugh.

  


Images. Nothing more, nothing solid, and certainly nothing he deserves.

  


Whatever Rey envisions – if anything – she quickly glides her hand to the cuff of his adesote nightshirt, encircling his wrist and tugging it over her middle. He shifts, wrapping himself around her back, his arm completely looping around her small waist. Her warmth and light tingle along his palms, in the hollow of his neck where her head is tucked, everywhere he is touching her.

  


Even if her presence is just an illusion of the Force, she feels radiant and alive in his embrace. Maybe, just for a few precious hours, he can pretend.

  


Laying her forearm warmly over his, she strokes his wrist softly through the fabric with her thumb. Her gentle touch is calming and electrifying at the same time. Why is she still here with him? He doesn’t deserve empathy or compassion from anyone, and right now, he needs it more than anything.

  


“Are you safe?” he whispers. Rey’s tunic and trousers are clean, arms freshly wrapped with the bandaging she prefers. Someone has discovered her in the wreckage on Seregar and shown mercy.

  


“For now.”

  


She’s the Resistance’s champion. A warrior who would have slaughtered him without a second thought just days ago. They would all turn their backs on her now, every last one of them, if they knew she was fraternising with the enemy. He clenches his teeth. He shouldn’t be doing this, all of his remorse and vulnerability laid bare before her.

  


“Tell me… tell me… what she was like,” he manages quietly. “What you remember.”

  


Rey considers for a moment, carding through loving memories of his mother that might reignite his rage if she were to share them, he realises ashamedly. General Organa Solo, the esteemed commander of the enemy faction in a decade-long war, martyred for her cause.

  


“Sharing tea with her,” she offers finally. “There was an arbour in our base on Peveron. It was beautiful… the lush greenery… ruins of some ancient civilisation... I remember the kindness in her eyes. How peaceful she was… and how calm I felt, just sitting with her. She was steadfast. A pillar in so many ways, for so many people.”

  


Her words hold a faint ring of familiarity, but he hates the feeling that she is talking about a stranger. What his mother had become to him. “Go on,” he urges gently.

  


“She taught me how to play holochess. On the Falcon. To pass the time during long, boring journeys… or when I got too frustrated trying to read the Texts. She was so patient with me.” Rey draws a shaky breath. “She always won our tournaments, of course, but I didn’t mind… I was always just too swept up in the strategy of the game, the animation - our midget creatures thumping each other, and the electronics behind it all.” She sighs. “And Leia would just… patiently indulge me, every time.”

  


His mother had taught him, too. She was unbeatable, once he insisted that she stop letting him win. A cunning strategist; foreboding of things to come. “You could have cheated… Anticipated her moves through the Force,” he whispers.

  


Rey gently squeezes his wrist. “Um… I did. She just -” she makes a snuffling noise, like muted laughter, despite herself - “cheated better. I upgraded the table’s selenium drive, too… the program used to freeze whenever the Kintan strider bludgeoned the glarslug.”

  


“K’lor’slug,” Kylo corrects automatically.

  


She pauses. “You’ve played dejarik.”

  


Yes, at the same table – something seemingly insignificant they have shared that he catches and clings to, files away to cherish in future. The Millennium Falcon is still aboard the Finalizer, awaiting dispatch to a ship graveyard or dumping into space. He has not yet given the order. It seems a shame to have paid such a handsome sum for his father’s legendary freighter, only to abandon it… it wouldn't be beyond restoration and recommissioning as a First Order vessel.

  


“You have the Sacred Texts,” he mutters instead.

  


She hesitates for so long, he is convinced he has fractured their tenuous connection and she will vanish. Her answer is apprehensive. “...Yes.”

  


“Skywalker gave them to you?”

  


“No. I stole them,” she confesses.

  


_Ah_. He could not imagine Master Skywalker parting so readily with his revered Sacred Jedi Texts. Pulling her closer into his chest, he revels in her radiant heat spreading through him. There is something wondrously intimate about this, holding her from light years away, their hushed whispers to each other.

  


“My mo – Leia was helping you read them?”

  


“Yes… we were decoding them together.”

  


“...Can you read?”

  


“Of course I can read,” she hisses indignantly, tapping a heel against his shin – not quite a kick. “I taught myself. At Niima Outpost. But… operation manuals, service logs, access codes, that sort of thing. What’s of value to trade, what can be fixed… the Jedi Texts are… so different. Not what I’m used to, the language and...” Rey trails off thoughtfully. “Have… have you read them?”

  


“Yes.”

  


Experimentally, he slides one bare foot up the silken sheets, finding her small feet and tracing the instep of one sole with his big toe. Her reaction does not disappoint. She squeals softly and wriggles within his embrace – he can feel the play of muscles underneath her tunic – then snuggles into him again, rewrapping his arm securely around her.

  


She’s ticklish. He feels enormously pleased to have discovered this, for no logical reason. “Do you still have them?” he asks.

  


“I do, sort of, but… but I can’t...”

  


“I could... help you read them?” he offers diffidently.

  


She cranes her neck up toward him and he can just make out one red-rimmed hazel eye, bright with anticipation. “You would?”

  


“If you’d like that, Rey,” he murmurs, lips ghosting across her temple with his words. There it is again, her cursed, intoxicating scent. It’s like a drug. He can’t get enough of it; something lush and inviting, like fresh scented pine and honey. He wonders if his pillow will still smell like her – if _he_ will still smell like her - when she’s gone.

  


“I don’t know how it would work,” she grumbles. “Would you really, Ben?”

  


“It would be my pleasure.” His mouth lightly brushes her forehead as she turns away, resting her head back into the curve of his throat. _Ben_. She calls him Ben, and he wants to _be_ Ben again. Just for tonight; just for her.

  


“What do you remember?” she whispers.

  


“Very little.” Since spurning the light, he rarely entertains memories of his former life. He will never refer to Leia as 'Mother,' nor any variant of it. Any images of her that remain are a nebulous haze. “Her voice. Her hair,” he mutters. _Shouting in the next room, where they think he can’t hear them. Huddling in a corner during council meetings. Loveless synthskin pats on the head._ Recollections he will never share – but Rey hears them anyway, or perhaps he’s projecting them. She wraps his arm more securely around her, sinking into his body a little deeper.

  


A long, comfortable silence settles as he holds her, enjoying the weight of her forearm across his, the rhythmic rise-and-fall of her back against his chest. Cuddling her in the darkness is a little touch of heaven; he wishes that he could extend the night, just to stay with her for longer.

  


“Tell me more. Please… about Leia.”

  


“She was a natural leader. I admired her so much. Driven, but… fair. She watched out for all of us.”

  


Kylo nods, pulling her into him a little tighter.

  


“She was our rock. Our tower of strength. I don’t know what -”

  


Rey catches herself.

  


_what they’ll do without her,_ her traitorous thoughts divulge. She is picturing the ace pilot, the one he tortured for the map to Skywalker. _Dameron_. And not without a note of fear, Kylo senses.

  


_They._

  


The Resistance lives. Hux was mistaken. He considers what to do with this information.

  


“Ben… Please… please don’t.” The tension bleeds back into her voice. Realising her mistake, her whole body stiffens against him. Will she disappear now? “They have no plans to move against the First Order. We’re just trying to build a life for ourselves.” That’s not entirely true either, he reads, but she wants it to be.

  


Kylo takes a measured breath. “They’re not being hunted, Rey. Their bounties were lifted. And yours.”

  


“They told me.” Her hard, knotted back muscles begin to unwind.

  


He imagines the rebels will build a funeral pyre for Leia, a falsehood though it would be for what his army left of her remains. Reconjure her among themselves ephemerally with their requiem, as he could not do with the Force. For a moment, he visualises himself as a party to her funeral rites, slipping her promise ring beneath a sheet of white muslin cloth, paying his last respects along with those she knew and loved. He won’t even be able to have that, he realises dejectedly.

  


“I… I don’t know.” Rey answers the question he cannot vocalise, her voice choked. “I was too late… I won’t… I don’t think they’ll even _let me_...” The words end in a shuddering sob.

  


Maker be damned. He shifts, fumbling for her hand.

  


His fingers clasp instead over cold metal, some peculiar linked bracelet circumscribing her wrist. Tracing its edge with his fingertips, he feels patterned ridging, sharp angles, a hinge…

  


“You were stun cuffed?” he asks in disbelief.

  


Rey lets out a frustrated groan.

  


“Why?”

  


“It doesn’t matter. It was nothing.” She’s guarding her thoughts now, sensing his intrusion.

  


“Are you safe?” he demands again.

  


Rey nods slowly. “It was just a misunderstanding and then they… they couldn’t find the key.” Her lie slips out, smooth and easy like melted saltnut butter running down toast. Hearing the blatant dishonesty in her voice, he wonders whether it is possible for either of them to lie convincingly to the other through their bond.

  


Kylo scoffs. He will humour her, then. “You’re a Jedi, Rey. You don’t _need_ a key.” He gently slides the arm not holding her underneath their shared pillow and reaches for the cuff, pincing its links between the thumb and forefinger of each hand.

  


“I don’t?”

  


He _almost_ chuckles. “We wield the Force. We can bend time and matter and the universe to our liking,” he rumbles softly. “ _This_ is no challenge.” Lifting his head from the pillow, he rests his jaw on the crescent of her neck and focuses on the flimsy locking mechanism. There are red chafing marks on her wrists beneath the cuffs. “Do you trust me?”

  


She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t, he can tell, but she nods again nonetheless.

  


With pinpoint precision, Kylo lifts the pins with the Force so the shear planes align, and turns the tumbler. The lock springs open with a faint click. Grasping the manacle around her other wrist, he repeats the process, tossing the open cuffs over the side of the sleeper. Whether they land in his realm or in Rey’s, he is uncertain. If he concentrated, he could probably atomise her durasteel binders as effortlessly as puffing a fftssfft’s seed-ball into the wind. With her in his arms like this, he thinks that he could move mountains.

  


“Thank you,” she breathes.

  


“You’re welcome.” His nose nudges her cheek as he rests his head back onto their shared pillow.

  


Rey loops his left arm around her waist once more and wraps his right across her shoulders, blanketing herself in his embrace. An achingly sweet gesture, and so much more than he is entitled to. She silences the gnashing teeth and tearing claws of his mind. _This_ is what had sustained him, his salvation through all those months of boundless, aimless rage and confusion as newly christened Supreme Leader, but he is no longer reaching for her across the cosmos – she’s here in his quarters, in his sleeper, drowsing within his arms, and he can almost believe that she’s his.

  


“Rey?” he whispers.

  


“Mmm?” Her soft fingertips lazily caress his forearms.

  


“I want to see you. I want you here. With me. For real.”

  


Her thoughts are foggy with fatigue; she’s close to dozing off. “Me, too,” she mumbles. “Will you stay with me?”

  


_Always_ , he thinks, nuzzling her hair. “I’m… I’m not... you’re not really here.”

  


She yawns. “...just until I fall asleep?”

  


Kylo pulls her in close, enfolding her tighter until their bodies melt together. She is so warm, so soft, his only antidote to this cold universe. They stand at opposite sides of a war that has raged for aeons, incarnates of an ancient grudge – and yet through some bizarre, inexplicable whim of the Force, she fits perfectly into the circle of his arms.

  


Holding the woman he has already dreamed about more than he should, he counts her sleeping breaths as they become slower, more even. When she disappears, she will take the best part of him with her. She keeps him burning when logic decries that his light should have been smothered out long ago.

  


After a long time, cozy and peaceful, he lets exhaustion claim him.

  


He’s not fit to love. He is a monster. But _stars_ , how he wants to love this girl.

  


  


~

  


  


“I failed, _nerra_.”

  


Kylo holds a holopad communicator out at arm’s length. The bridge crew need not be privy to their Supreme Leader’s enfeebling admissions.

  


Kopecz nods resignedly, his gaze downcast. “I know, my lord.”

  


“I’m sorry.”

  


“Don’t be.” The cloaked Twi’lek rises from one knee, drawing himself up to full height in the shimmering column of the hologram. “I felt your attempt from many systems away, sire. You shifted the heavens and oceans for her.”

  


Kylo grimaces and doesn’t reply. It was not enough.

  


“She is in another realm. Those who have become one with the Force will not rejoin the living, no matter how powerful the summoner.”

  


He stares into the projection for a long moment. “You will succeed one day, my brother.”

  


Kopecz offers a small smile, one that does not reach his eyes.

  


“What did you want?”

  


The Knight pauses, frowning uncertainly. “To offer my condolences. _Nobra edgra uba mama._ And… assurance of your wellbeing, _nerra_.” He slowly, pointedly taps one clawed finger twice to his temple.

  


Kylo remains silent, but Kopecz is studying him fixedly now, his pale eyes rounded with expectancy. Waiting for him to say more, he realises, as if he is on the precipice of something critical. Some courtesy or formality that, as Supreme Leader and ruler of the Knights, he has overlooked.

  


He draws a deep breath. “The galaxy is broken.”

  


He has the Twi’lek’s undivided attention. It’s an insuperable undertaking, what he proposes; but maybe, just maybe… he is not alone.

  


“Where do I start?” he asks.

  


In answer, Kopecz’s lips curl into a broad grin, baring even rows of freshly filed teeth. Kylo has not seen his old friend’s face alight with such pure, unabashed joy in years. Not since their final sparring session at the Jedi Temple when, at just over half his stature, Kira expertly flipped Byt over her shoulder onto his back, pounced on him, and announced in perfect, fluent Ryl that she was in love with him.

  


  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Twi’leki/Ryl translation:**  
>  _Nobra edgra uba mama_ = I'm sorry about your mother.


	17. Qa3 Nxc3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben had urged her to join him again; a softer, more earnest entreaty than his last, amongst corpses and raining fire and wild pandemonium. If the belonging she so eagerly seeks awaits her at the end of that path, would forsaking her incarcerators be so wrong? To give herself completely to this man?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to @pixelrey for bottom right image.

 

 

 _Take heart, Master Solo._ Teedee recites the line with the exact same hollow inflection as the last seven times this morning, programmed to respond to subtle changes in her charge’s body language. The miserable, pale-faced boy ignores her, pushing pieces of soggy flatcake around his plate with his fork. He’s lost his appetite, determinedly not listening to the hurricane of biting insults that carries from the adjacent room. The air crackles with animosity. _Selfish nerf-herder! He needs his father!_

 

Teedee’s repulsively lifelike synthskin hand pats his dark curls as if he were a domestic pet; it would be a condescending gesture, if not from a nanny droid. Ben’s face crumples. He presses the heels of his hands to his ears, glaring into artificially-lit, unblinking eyes until she starts to shake on the tiled floor. So does the plate, the table, everything not bolted down.

 

One scene melts into another.

 

 _Kiss her, you idiot,_ he tells himself – but he can only gawk at the scavenger instead, like a crinking moron. She’s surrendered herself, stun cuffed and trapped in a turbolift. He will bring her before Master Snoke. But this is not going to go the way she thinks.

 

He’s reached the pinnacle of his existence. Elated and victorious, the heir to Lord Vader extinguishes the blade skewering the final Praetorian Guard’s skull and lifts its vibro-voulge away from his throat. Snoke’s mouldering corpse lolls, bisected, on the throne-room floor. She trusted him with her own lightsaber and saved his life. Heart pounding with anticipation, he offers her everything he has and in that moment, the universe rests on the head of a pin. _Please._ When she accepts his hand, he will pull her into an embrace, he decides, and then – he will _finally_ be free.

 

Whatever Ben envisions – if anything – he twines himself tightly around her back, looping his sinewy forearm about her middle. Rattled by the torrent of his memories rushing in, Rey swiftly glides her hand to the cuff of his nightshirt. The visions are too intense, but she can’t let go. For whatever precious moments the Force will allow them, they is no longer alone in their mourning. She senses that he needs her now as badly as she needs him.

 

Ben is hundreds of systems away, but maybe, just for one night, she can pretend. Their anchor across the stars feels so close.

 

“Are you safe?” he whispers.

 

Lieutenant Connix’s steadfast presence in the Force still hovers outside her door, hands wrapped around another steaming mug of caf. “For now.”

 

If the Resistance ever honours their fallen leader with a memorial service, Rey suspects she will be as unwelcome as Ben. She cannot imagine herself paying her last respects alongside Poe and those who no doubt suspect she is at least partially to blame.

 

And so they cling to each other at their darkest hour, sharing loving memories of Leia Organa Solo and her virtuous life; their own personal requiem. Ben warms every part of her – her body, mind and soul. The bond sparks and surges between them.

 

She falls asleep in his arms.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

Wedge is busily programming the navicomputer when Poe skulks back into the cockpit and slumps in the copilot’s chair. “General Dameron,” he greets without looking up.

 

“Captain Antilles.” A cursory check of the flight control systems reassures him that nothing _else_ has gone catastrophically wrong while he slept.

 

"A little under two parsecs from our destination, sir,” Wedge volunteers. “Fuel cell’s almost empty. We should just make it.”

 

Poe drags a hand down his face. A few hours of restless tossing and turning has left him feeling more exhausted than before. He woke with a sharp spike of dread in the pit of his stomach, a nagging guilt that he has made an unforgivable mistake, his gut clenching as the hopelessness of their situation sank in. Leia is dead. Rakata Capital and Nightbrothers are toast. Their most powerful ally has probably betrayed them all, and if not, he has almost certainly alienated her, ruined any possibility of them ever having anything together. Not to mention losing face with Connix and gods know who else.

 

He has led his remaining men from one side of the Outer Rim to the other with nothing more than an impulsive, poorly-formed game plan that will probably destroy them all. It was the best he could come up with in the short hours between returning to base with a smouldering explosion crater and a missing general, and his meagre army looking to him for their next move. If General Organa Solo was still here, she would know what to do. She always knew.

 

“Give me the good news,” he grumbles.

 

“Well, sir -” the old pilot brightens, rubbing his hands together complacently - “we have reserves. Three crates of rhydonium. Our fleet’ll be good to go wherever you see fit, for quite some time.”

 

Poe quirks an eyebrow at him. “You’re kidding me. Who’d you have to hoodwink for that kind of loot?” They can absolutely _not_ afford to have criminal cartels on their tail right now, wanting their merchandise reinstated.

 

“No one, sir. General Calrissian won them, fair and square.”

 

“Fair and square,” Poe repeats dryly. “That’s a load of bantha crap. What were the stakes this time?”

 

Wedge shrugs. “You know Lando. The Neb-C, probably, or a thousand credits we don’t have.” He shoots a rueful glance at his copilot. “Doesn’t matter. He never loses at sabacc.”

 

“That where the PLY-3000 came from, as well?” Poe had assumed it was stolen, watching Lando hurrying down the boarding ramp of their shiny new spaceship with Nunb hot on his heels. He had been beside himself with worry, grilling anyone in sight about whose shuttle Leia had boarded before the attack. A personal luxury yacht could not possibly be more out of place among their battered, weathered armada that perpetually looks two missions away from a starship graveyard.

 

“You bet,” the captain chirps. “It’s had six proton torpedo launchers installed, it’s got a Torplex deflector shield projector, and any passing marauders who spot us will probably presume we’re Hutts.”

 

General Calrissian is a dirty cheater, Poe knows. He’s handed over more credit chips and shouted Lando more fingers of Kowakian rum than he’ll ever admit, having lost time and time again. “You get away from that clean?” he asks.

 

Wedge snorts. “The Dirama Hutts are a proud race,” he ventures sarcastically, suppressing a grin. “They know when to admit defeat. PLYs are a decicred a dozen for them, anyway. Besides, six hundred and sixty parsecs, and not a single craft on our radars. You chose well. We’ve got our Jedi on board, too. You know, for just one trip, I’d like to know what it’s like to fly with the Force watching my back. ”

 

Poe steeples his fingers beneath his chin, gazing out at but not really seeing the coruscating kaleidoscope of colour through the viewport. He’s made a number of dubious choices lately. They could all use a stroke of good fortune, honestly obtained or not. Slipping one hand beneath the collar of his tunic to free the silver chain around his neck, he searches out the ring looped through it – a brushed steel washer from rebel tech that served as his mother’s wedding band. He has worn it since her passing, wanting to one day share it with the right partner. Sometimes, hope feels impossibly far away. He rolls it absently between his fingertips.

 

“What’s on Bri’n, anyway, General? Besides – not the First Order?”

 

Poe takes a deep breath, debating whether to share his hastily-fabricated scheme before anything transpires. A means of making a real dent on the dystopian autocracy of the First Order, even with so few rebels left. Their deliverance to freedom. Maybe.

 

Before he can answer, Chewbacca’s triumphant yowling blares through the subspace transceiver. The CR-ninety has already emerged from hyperspace and is now hovering above the blue-green orb of Bri’n. It’s always a race, with a Wookiee at the controls.

 

“Wait for us,” Poe orders. “Shields up. See any other ships, report back immediately.”

 

Chewie yips his assent, adding a disgruntled roar. _You’re punishing the wrong goddamn Jedi. Go get the one responsible._ _That patricidal maniac_ _._

 

The oversized fuzzball hadn’t put up a fight on Seregar. What does he care now?

 

“Copy, Chewie. Making our final run now. Over.” Wedge side-eyes the general. “You heard her earlier, I take it?”

 

“Her?”

 

“Well, Rey. Who else? Your fair Jedi Knight.”

 

The innuendo makes Poe uneasy. He wonders how many of his comrades suspect that his intrigue with their Force-wielding warrior might extend beyond anything purely professional.

 

“She’s in the brig. I interrogated her myself. Got nothing,” he replies, stone-faced. The captain need never know about Poe’s misguided... predilections. That aside, he _will_ get to the bottom of her pledge to the Supreme Scourge that she was _all his_ , her reappearance at the blast zone with a lightsaber identical to Kylo Ren’s.

 

If he can ever look her in the eye again.

 

“She was on the radio professing her innocence, just -” Wedge glances at his wrist-mounted chrono - “eight hours ago. POWs don’t get that kind of leniency.”

 

Poe lours at him.

 

“You let her go?” the captain adds casually, as though it were foregone conclusion.

 

 _Connix._ Sure, she’d pulled him into line, but releasing a prisoner transgresses her authority by a long way. “What else did she say?” he replies, eerily calm.

 

“Uh...” Wedge is suddenly transfixed with the astrogator controls, flipping switches and tapping the instruments in sequence, perhaps realising he has inadvertently ratted out one of his compatriots. “Nothing much that I remember.”

 

“ _Think_ , buddy.” His tone brooks no argument.

 

“It was obviously meant to be a private conversation... the mechanic's sick… Finn said to get some sleep and stay in her room.”

 

“Her _room_?” Poe leaps to his feet, stumbling over the copilot’s chair in his haste.

 

“With all due respect, sir, you may want to sit down. We’re jumping out of lightspeed in T minus two minutes...”

 

Captain Antilles’s admonition fades behind Poe as he barrels out of the cockpit.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

Rey wakes, framed by something solid.

 

Whether she is laying atop a bantha-wool blanket on a bosun’s cot barely adequate for her small frame, or an enormous, luxurious sleeper adorned with black shimmersilk sheets – one thing is for certain.

 

A large torso, hard against hers, moulded to her back. The soothing rhythm of his sleeping breaths. His burly arm slung across her waist. Basking in his radiant heat, she feels secure, and treasured, and

 

_loved_

 

in a way that she never has before; only in dreams.

 

If this is a dream, she never wants it to end.

 

Ben had urged her to join him again; a softer, more earnest entreaty than his last, amongst corpses and raining fire and wild pandemonium. If the belonging she so eagerly seeks awaits her at the end of that path, would forsaking her incarcerators be so wrong? To give herself completely to this man?

 

Three dull thuds at the door snap her out of her reverie. A warning. The comlink headset, resting out of reach across the room, tinkles with inaudible chatter, then she hears a rapid crescendo of approaching voices. Angry voices.

 

Oblivious to the fracas outside, her sleeping bedmate sighs contentedly and shifts her closer, the slow cadence of his breathing uninterrupted.

 

Vivid images of imprisonment, hanging by aching wrists, jolt Rey fully awake. Beyond the bulkhead door, the muffled shouting erupts into a vicious argument. She recognises Poe’s booming roar that seems to shake the walls, quickly echoed by Connix’s shrill tones, tempers blowing hot. They’re coming for her. Through the viewport, the night sky has stabilized, painted an opaque indigo with twin crescent moons gleaming like the half-lidded eyes of the heavens. Close to planetfall. Time to collect the prisoner of war.

 

Rey sits bolt upright, heart hammering against her ribcage, feeling a thick arm slide away from her middle. Different, now that her focus has shifted, like a phantom caress. Panicking, she springs to her feet.

 

 _They_ are really here.

 

 _He_ is not.

 

Ben’s drowsing visage reaches for the place where she lay curled in his embrace a moment ago, pawing at empty air. She consciously releases the thread, sinking her teeth into her lower lip when he evanesces with the connection, leaving her once more alone. Her muscles still burn from their duel, from her imprisonment.

 

Throwing herself over the opposite side of the cot, she retrieves the durasteel cuffs and promptly snaps them around her wrists.

 

Her eyes flicker to the collar. It hangs open by its hinge in the corner where she had flung it, furious that her own compatriot could ever feel justified in crippling her so. The disturbing choker that bled her dry of her power. Hidden safely away in her quarters, she had stopped short of tearing it apart with the Force, anticipating the inevitable confrontation when they made planetfall. The collar stays, he’d stipulated.

 

And - Pla Ren’s saber. Rey has fought too hard, risked way too much, to surrender it now.

 

Emotions flood her mind. Betrayal. Fear. Desolation. She glances up at her pillow, with its two indentations side by side... guilt. _You’ve made your choice._

 

Rose is ill. Finn and Chewie’s faith in her is unwavering. Connix is standing guard out there right now, demanding her freedom. No. _This_ is where she belongs, with them, no matter what. She will never be disloyal.

 

Rey calls the necklet to her quivering hands and stares at it numbly, frozen in indecision. What should she do? Affix it back around her throat, placate her captors and render herself useless in the Force? Toss it aside and commit to all-out warfare against her own comrades? On Seregar, she’d acted on instinct, recklessly attacking Ben, and look where it has gotten her. Outside, she hears Poe’s unrestrained fury, words spat with the ferocity and rapidity of blasterfire. He’s labelled her a turncoat, accused her outright of being an accessory to Leia’s murder. Any moment now, he will come charging through.

 

When his rage boils over and he starts thumping the duralloy door, Rey knows she is out of time.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

Lieutenant Connix has served under hot-headed superiors before, but Poe Dameron is a special kind of hot-headed. He bleats madcap accusations at her with his stubbly face mottled crimson, eyes popping, tree trunk neck strained. Yes, she’s released their POW - although technically in accordance with his instructions - and yes, their army is all but nullified now, reduced from two thousand strong to perhaps fifty. But at the heart of it, she suspects, is a man full of fear, thrust into a position of responsibility for which he isn’t ready. Their screaming argument attracts Emjon and the hammerhead, blaster rifles held loosely by their sides.

 

Kaydel holds him off for as long as she can, but eventually he barges ahead and swipes his datacard at the door’s magnolock mechanism, opening it, as she’d known he would. The two overzealous recruits step forward to flank him, obscuring her view.

 

She isn’t sure for whom she should worry more right now – the Jedi Knight, or the general.

 

Poe storms into the bosun’s quarters, hand hovering above the Glie-44 holstered at his waist, she observes with alarm. _No, you frizzled sheb_ , she thinks, praying it’s still only set to stun. Blasters are of no threat to Rey; she’d watched her before, awestruck, when a clutch of Stormtroopers opened fire on their squadron at Kaski - deflecting plasma bolts with a casual wave of her wrist. Even stunning her would be foolish. Ostracizing their Jedi warrior is the absolute worst thing he could do for the Resistance right now.

 

He opens with the stupidest, most obvious question she has ever heard.

 

“ _Why aren’t you in your cell?!_ ”

 

Rey doesn’t gratify that with an answer, but whatever Poe sees gives him pause. The taut cords of his neck relax and his rigid stance softens a tad. If the woman has her wits about her, she will have heeded Kaydel’s advice and refastened the necklet. Hopefully perceiving no threat, he spins on his heel and levels a look of unveiled contempt at the lieutenant. “You let her go,” he simmers.

 

“Hardly,” Kaydel retorts, crossing her arms. “She’s right here.”

 

He glares at her, eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re demoted.”

 

She almost sniggers at that. With only a handful of them left, rank counts for diddly squat. “Like I care,” she snarks.

 

“You have no authority to release a prisoner.”

 

“Oh, and I suppose she’ll have a fair trial when we land?” she bites back. “Before what tribunal, _General_ Dameron?” The recruits glance back and forth between them uncertainly. “Are you planning to be judge, jury and executioner here?”

 

The general bristles. “I’ll deal with that on Bri’n.”

 

“No, _we’ll_ deal with that, _right_ _here_ _-_ ”

 

The deck judders. They’ve landed.

 

For a split second, all four of them stumble. The susurration of sublight engines dampens to a muted whine. Kaydel quickly regains her footing, shaking her head reprovingly. Their general ought to be in the cockpit right now, directing his brigade to disembark, unload and establish base camp. Coordinating a scout party. Not here.

 

“Poe,” Rey says softly, interrupting their silent standoff.

 

Poe raises a hand to silence her, continuing to give her his back. He casts a critical eye over the recruits as if daring them to challenge his authority. “Take her back to the brig,” he growls. “I have work to do.”

 

“ _I’ll_ take her,” Kaydel offers defiantly.

 

“You will _not_.”

 

“General Dameron,” Rey implores again, and Poe whirls back to face her.

 

Kaydel shuffles forward between the Ithorian and the Bith until she can see their Jedi prisoner. She is seated meekly beside the cot, knees drawn to her chest with her arms wrapped around them, like a frightened child. Her willowy frame is shrouded in a hooded sackcloth robe several sizes too large, its cowl hanging at her back, but the dull metallic cuffs around her wrists and ankles are clearly visible. Her wrists are obviously chafed, circumscribed with red marks. Clutching the lieutenant’s comlink headset in her right hand, she raises her chin to them, revealing her throat and the bulky metallic collar enclosing it. _Smart girl,_ Kaydel muses.

 

Poe darts forward and snatches the comlink from her fist. As he does so, Rey calmly rises to her feet and presents her wrists to him like an inmate to their jailer. The bell sleeves of the cloak slide up her forearms, unveiling the manacles of her stun cuffs.

 

“I will not fight you, General,” she declares smoothly.

 

Kaydel has never once heard her address him as commander or captain, even as he ascended the ranks of the Resistance. Seemingly discomfited by her use of the honorific now, he appraises her again warily.

 

“This war is only worth it if those who are part of it can live the lives we fight to protect,” she continues, still as a cadaver and just as pallid.

 

Poe gasps. His hand flutters to the neckline of his tunic, fingers dipping beneath the hem. Mouth dropping open, he stares at her for seconds that seem to stretch into an eternity.

 

“I’ll stand with you, Poe – with the Resistance – always. People are hurting. People are suffering. We can’t sit and do nothing, no matter the odds of success. If you must imprison me to continue to fight for justice, I won’t resist.” She takes a step closer, unintimidated.

 

Whatever she’s doing, it seems to be working. His face is a study in agonised bewilderment. She’s hit a nerve. The smartassed general lets out a shuddering breath, his lips forming words that die before they are spoken. Rey could probably have levitated them all like boulders and strolled underneath to freedom without a care in the world, but here she is, serene and unresisting, the perfect embodiment of the ancient Jedi from age-old folktales.

 

Poe swallows hard. He looks back at his retinue, his limpid eyes suspiciously shiny. “Wh… where’s the lightsaber?”

 

“There was no lightsaber, General,” Kaydel deadpans.

 

He appears to consider for a moment, his gaze falling to the deck, then shakes his head dismissively. “It’ll still be in the brig. Finn instructed her to remain here until landing, correct?”

 

Emjon nods. “Sir.”

 

“Good. Watch her. Keep her here until he arrives.”

 

The recruits’ relief is almost palpable, not having had to open fire on either party or try to strong-arm the Jedi. “Yes, sir,” they declare in unison, bowing their strange heads. Kaydel scrutinises them as they watch their beleaguered new leader lumbering away. A horticulturalist and a musician. As combat-ready as a pair of toddlers toting plastic cap-guns.

 

The Resistance is fighting a losing battle. If anything can turn the tide for them now, it’s Rey. It has to be.

 

The instant he disappears out of sight, Rey’s shoulders slump and she hangs her head, huffing out a sharp sigh. Pushing past the two aliens, Kaydel gently takes one of Rey’s hands in both of hers, pressing their palms together as if in prayer. For a moment, their eyes meet and Rey’s widen with a brief flash of surprise, feeling the object passed to her by Kaydel’s sleight of hand.

 

She has never known the Jedi to act so equanimously – Rey is usually as quick-tempered as Poe - but if what she observed just now was a facade, it was one hell of a show. The distant hiss of hydraulics tells her Wedge is lowering the ramps.

 

“I think you may have just defused a bomb, honey,” she remarks. “If I were you, I’d have told him exactly where to stick his neurothingy.”

 

Rey affords her a humourless smile.

 

“What was that about `the lives we fight to protect’? I swear I’ve heard that before...”

 

“He wants to carry on her legacy,” Rey answers vaguely.

 

A frown creases her forehead. Any insight on how to upend their headstrong general may come in useful in future. “General Organa’s?”

 

“No. Shara Bey’s.”

 

Like the quote, the name sounds familiar. A legend among rebels past, Kaydel presumes. Just as Rey will undoubtedly become someday, in generations to come, when this is all over.

 

 _Fifty soldiers,_ she reminds herself _._ _Gardeners. Musicians._ _If. If_ this is ever all over.

 

But she will keep any disparaging thoughts private. “Finn will be along soon enough,” she reassures, squeezing the flat of Rey’s hand pointedly between her own. “Anything you need?”

 

Rey glances warily in the direction Poe strode away. “I need… I need Peazy to examine Rose as soon as you’ve set up camp,” she says softly. “She’s sick.”

 

“Of course… you’re coming with us, right? When Finn arrives?”

 

“I don’t know.” Her face is pale, drawn tight. “It depends on...”

 

“That laserbrain won’t be hassling you, I promise,” Kaydel assures her, releasing her grip and pulling her into a loose hug. As their hands part, the Jedi’s fingers curl into a fist, unnoticed by the pair of sentinels. Rey’s heady perfume greets her immediately. It’s her hair; an exotic aroma, something like Manaxian amber intermingled with cinnamon. Someone must have pilfered some luxurious soap on their most recent supply run. “We look out for each other.”

 

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

 

If not for Rey, she would probably be a pulverised smear on any given number of planets by now. She briefly considers why the Jedi was never assigned rank. “Kaydel,” she corrects.

 

Heavy footsteps approach behind them. Probably another of the recruits, keen to assist now that the furore has died down.

 

“You smell nice,” she adds.

 

She doesn’t mean for the compliment to sound creepy – but apparently it does, because Rey tenses a little and moves to push her away.

 

“Hey, Lieutenant!” Snap’s gregarious voice reverberates through the passageway at her back. “Am I missing something? We’re back on terra firma. I got us here in one piece.”

 

Kaydel releases her. “Yeah, bravo, ace,” she chaffs over her shoulder. He’s been out like a light for almost the entire journey. “I’m coming.”

 

“Base camp now, you lot. Hug later.”

 

With a subtle wink, Kaydel turns and hurries after Snap.

 

 

 

~

 

 

 

Shutting the bulkhead door behind her, Rey collapses back onto her cot. It had taken an extraordinary measure of self-restraint, affecting tranquility and complaisance before Poe, but it had worked. Even with her handicap. Her first instincts had been to beat him senseless, or bolt past them all to the boarding ramp the instant she felt their craft land.

 

 _There is no emotion, there is peace_ , she remembers from the Rammahgon. Leia had read her the passage aloud. Perhaps she is finally learning – embracing more of the Jedi ethos than just lack of attachment to another. Relinquishing her to Finn’s care is as good as letting her go free.

 

Excusing herself from the two desultory guards was easy. Both were only too eager to oblige when she demanded privacy to attend to womanly matters before their replacement arrived to collect her.

 

Those womanly matters include testing the lieutenant’s remote control – the infernal collar disengages from her neck immediately – and trying to manipulate the locking mechanism of each manacle around her ankles using the Force. Rey is well-versed in the mechanics of a cylinder lock, having smashed, picked and dissected a great many aboard long-dead Star Destroyers to access their hidden treasures. No matter how intense her focus, however, she cannot visualise the internal pins lifting. After a third failed attempt, when the cuff grows calescent and begins to vibrate, she gives up, rolling frustratedly onto her side.

 

The pillow still smells like Ben.

 

An curious, enticing scent – exotic wood and spice. It’s intoxicating. And unique. Her breath had caught in her throat when Kaydel detected it on her.

 

She will need to be more careful.

 

 _What did he offer you that I can’t?_ Poe had inquired.

 

Jogan fruit… bacta… knowledge… empathy. His cloak, when she was shivering… his long fingers, weaving through her hair. His warm embrace and gentle words, when her world shattered and light became shadow. The crooked white teeth he shows when he doesn’t realise he’s smiling, the way the tips of his overlarge ears redden when he looks at her. She’d wanted all of it.

 

And… the inhuman _thing_ she had battled just days ago, who felled four Praetorian Guards with unbridled brutality, thriving on the kill. Who carved his scarlet blade up the length of Finn’s spine, leaving him for dead in the snow. Whose saber he ignited through his own father’s chest as Han pleaded with him to come home, that they missed him. Devoid of emotion. Ruthless. Pitiless.

 

Beyond redemption.

 

Rey cannot have one without the other. Nor can she turn her back on the family she has forged in battle over this past solar cycle.

 

Swinging her legs over the side of the cot, she touches the lightsaber clipped securely to her belt under the cloak, then closes her eyes and tries in vain to meditate. Navigating the road ahead seems impossible without Leia’s guidance.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will also be from Rey's POV.


	18. bxc3 Nxe4!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “C’mere,” he mumbles sleepily into his pillow, pulling back the shimmersilk sheets for her.
> 
> He’s shirtless this time, all hard muscle and ivory skin. The lines of his sculpted torso are wreathed in shadow, every contour of his broad shoulders and burly chest reflecting the dull starlight, pale as a corpse.

 

 

She stills, listens.

 

It’s raining.

 

The pitter-patter of raindrops striking the plastene tent’s roof draws her out of her melancholy, out of her sloppily constructed dwelling, back into the forest. For a moment, all the wrongful accusations and and muddled loyalties and voluntary removal seem trivial. There is only the first scarlet blush of sunrise and the childlike wonder of rain, real _rain_ , a heaven-sent gift for every part of creation.

 

It never rained on Jakku.

 

Nor Bespin, N’zoth, Geonosis or any of the arid worlds where the Resistance would establish base camp, only to be uprooted within weeks or months when they were discovered. The combined value of fifty wanted fugitives made them irresistible to every bounty hunter across the galaxy, every impoverished native they encountered with that spark of recognition in their eyes – just one quick shadowfeed to the Hutts between starvation and luxury. Always beating a hasty retreat. Nowhere had begun to feel like home.

 

Leia was a wise tactician. She knew exactly how to evade the First Order, which remote sectors would be outside their purview. Desert planets, ice planets, back and forth between the two extremes. Barely habitable, scantily populated, bereft of resources. Not worthy of imperial invasion.

 

Rey tilts her face to the sky and raises up her hands, feeling water and sunshine together.

 

Precious rain. The sensation of it, cool pinpoints dotting her forehead, beading finely in her eyelashes and drizzling across her cheeks like saltless tears. Each drop is cold enough to command her mind to the present, pulling her away from the uncertainty of the past and what is to come.

 

How she had reveled in it on Peveron. Nineteen years of trading and begging for every last mouthful, and there it was, falling from the _sky,_ nothing short of a miracle.

 

The downpour becomes heavier, crackling above the towering canopy of evergreens, sluicing through into the undergrowth. The forest floor deepens from a dusty brown to a rich mahogany, sucking mud squelching between her toes when she wriggles them. Beyond the trees, the grass meadow becomes glossy, reflecting the sunlight. Everything intensifies. Colours. Smells. Fat droplets pounding at her bare skin. Fresh rivulets forming in the soil at her feet, carving a lazy downhill path toward the stream.

 

In the valley below, a meandering watercourse churns its way back toward the Resistance base just over a klick away, swelling in the deluge. Its silvery surface is alive with spattering raindrops and gleaming, pearlescent fish, leaping into the air. The angry black clouds engulf the mountaintops on the horizon and almost blot out the binary sunrise; she knows there will be more rain to come.

 

She will be pleased if it stays heavy. It is the only company she has now.

 

 _Are you going to tell me what happened?_ Finn had asked as they trudged away from the shuttles, each burdened with a heavy rucksack, unnoticed by their fellow soldiers – some still unpacking, some gathered around Poe.

 

The binders around her wrists and ankles never felt so heavy as right then, listening to fragments of his sermon to their disheartened squadron. Words of promise and strength, duty and honour. Noble words. When everything is lost, hope prevails. She heard the tremor in his voice.

 

The glorious downpour soaks through her clothes and runs freely down her face. It tastes like heaven; sweet and free of the chemical tang of purification powder.

 

 _He didn’t hurt you._ It wasn’t a question. Just a statement, that Finn wouldn’t be capable of processing anything to the contrary.

 

She’s drenched to the skin, water gushing now across her bare feet, the sodden earth swallowing her toes. For a second, Rey glances back to the open flap of her tent. Her things lay strewn across the floor, but protected from the rain by brittle, discoloured plastene; not as sturdy as an AT-AT, but watertight, at least. Her rumpled sleep-cocoon in a messy heap beside the Aionimica, a glowtube resting on its pages as a bookmark. The dreaded metallic necklet hanging open at its hinge. In one corner, her oversized rucksack with its priceless contents: energy pudding, a remote control, eleven more volumes, Leia’s lucky dice and not one, but _two_ lightsabers.

 

None of it belongs to her. Once a scavenger, always a scavenger, she thinks. The green saber was Master Skywalker’s, given to Finn by Leia for safekeeping - as if she knew what was coming. She feels unworthy of it. Igniting the Kel Dor’s weapon, however, had filled her with an inexplicable fear: suffocating in the oxygen-rich forest without her mask, a gripping compulsion to return to Tython and keep company with the spirits of her dead brothers. Its low hum made her blood curdle.

 

Finn had crossed paths with Kaydel somewhere between the CR-ninety and her quarters. Whatever they had shared, his expression was one of pressing unease, embracing Rey roughly then grabbing her by one arm, dragging her from the ship. _Just a few days, peanut. ‘Til Poe gets his head straight. I’ll still be along every day to train with you – just like old times._

 

Finn’s cloaked binary beacon pulses faintly at her wrist where she had snapped away the metal cuff like a twig, vexed by her inability to open the lock as Ben had. With time and practice, she will learn to command the Force with his finesse.

 

She supposes she has all the time in the world, now.

 

In her solitude, there is nothing to preclude her from summoning him. Nothing except for the periodic visits Finn has promised, until her eventual trial and reacceptance into – or expulsion from – the Resistance. Ben’s whispered words reverberate in her thoughts. _I want you here with me, for real._

 

She raises her hands to her face, fingertips just barely touching with a glistening meniscus between them. Rain-slicked and cold, she brushes back the hair plastered over her eyes, feet squelching through waterlogged peat as she makes her way to the river. This place is idyllic; more of a paradise than a punishment. She can almost overlook the loneliness, neglect the nagging hunch that she will be forever shrouded in suspicion among those she considered family.

 

At the far edge of the drifting slate-grey stormclouds, a brilliant patch of tangerine is blossoming now, the day’s first sunrays filtering through. Rey stares, unblinking, past the horizon.

 

After the rain, the sun shines brighter than ever.

 

 

~

 

 

The First Order meticulously schools their fledgling Stormtroopers on how to read.

 

Rey quickly learns that what they neglect to teach, however, is how to _understand_.

 

Finn recounts every mundane detail of establishing base camp in the shady glen downriver, how their scuttle team has revived the computers and is broadcasting on HoloNet backchannels to seek assistance and rebuild their numbers. Ghostwave encryption, he explains – an outdated New Republic coding system impenetrable to the First Order’s slicers. After a particularly fruitful supply run, the Resistance could live comfortably here for months. The general set out at first light with a small retinue of armed recruits; he has not divulged why, only that he will return with a plan. Clearly, Finn does not believe that Rey is in cahoots with the enemy.

 

Poe and the lieutenant have called an uneasy truce for the benefit of the squadron, he reports. Everyone is asking about her, wanting her back. Finn implores her - now that she’s `cooled off’ - to swallow her pride, wear the collar and return with him, especially in Poe’s absence.

 

Without hesitation, Rey refuses.

 

Poe had no right to debilitate her. One day, she may find it in herself to forgive him. Today is not that day.

 

Tonight, she and Finn will spar together like they always have. But for now, after laying awake for most of the night, struggling with the ancient runes of the Aionimica and jumping at every sound from the forest, Rey is content to listen while Finn reads aloud. Sprawled on her folded tent, she watches the mosaic of sunlight scattering through raindrops that still cling to the fronds above them. In the distance, fast-flowing water burbles across rocks, the river lapping gently at its mud-brown shore.

 

Keeping her thoughts focused is near impossible. The Sacred Texts are a constant reminder that she is pursuing an archaic, thousand-generation-old religion. Even Master Skywalker had forsaken the Jedi Order. _The legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy. Hubris. At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the empire, and wipe them out._

 

For whom will she fight, now that she is estranged from her own army?

 

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Cast aside all anger and hatred, for these are the pathways to the dark side of the Force.” Finn glances up at Rey from the timeworn Aionimica, seemingly convinced that his monotonous narration will have affected her poignantly in some way. “The Jedi aspire to reach a state of inner tranquility through meditation. A focus on calmness and peace will channel one’s power in the Force.”

 

“What does that mean – `pretend to be’?” she asks, her brow wrinkling. She feels like an impostor; a squanderer of divine gifts. If she was truly preordained for greatness, surely some part of the scriptures should call to her intuition.

 

Finn shrugs.

 

“Could a Jedi’s mindset be learned? It isn’t instinctual?” She hopes she’s right. It would be an enormous weight off her shoulders, if that were the case. Rey and serenity have never been close bedfellows. “Do you think that’s what it means?”

 

“I don’t know. _I_ wasn’t Resistance – just a Stormtrooper who ran away.” He glances uncertainly at Rose, seeking reassurance. “But when I met you, I pretended to be something I wasn’t. And now...”

 

“...you’re _The_ Finn,” she finishes for him, lips twitching into a smirk.

 

Rey frowns; it’s not the same. When her head isn’t spinning from trying to decipher the arcane prose, the questions just seem to keep piling up. “So, if I pretend to be a Jedi, I’ll become one?”

 

“You _are_ one,” Finn replies.

 

“Lifting rocks doesn’t make me a Jedi.”

 

His features cloud with confusion. “Heck, you have a lightsaber and you can levitate stuff and use the Force.” He points a finger at her. “Jedi.”

 

“Sounds like it to me,” Rose chirrups, idly fingering her Otomok medallion. Everything about her has changed – the flush of her sunken cheeks, the fullness to her smile, the melodious timbre of her voice. How could she not know? Even her hips swayed differently when she rambled up the shoreline to Rey’s campsite, arm-in-arm with Finn, their bare feet splashing in the shallow water.

 

“Do you wanna read it?” he offers.

 

She bats his arm, settling herself gingerly on the plastene against his back, legs splayed behind his. “Nuh-uh, you’re doing fine.”

 

Finn clears his throat. “The way of the Jedi Order is the way of wisdom and self-possession, backed by swift and decisive action when needed. They are guardians of the light side of the Force, maintaining peace and justice across the galaxy.”

 

“By bashing the bad guys with their laser swords,” Rose sallies. She winds her arms around Finn’s waist from behind, weaving underneath his tawny runyip leather jacket and knitting her fingers together over his stomach. “I mean, you know, bashing them calmly. Peacefully.”

 

Finn aims a withering look her way and she giggles mischievously. Listening to his flat narration would be insufferable if not for Rose’s quick-witted commentary, Rey thinks. He is certainly a capable reader, but he's no Leia.

 

“Knowledge, the Force, and self-discipline are the three pillars of Jedi strength. In combat, whereas an enemy may rely on their overwhelming power and grow impatient, a Jedi will take the time to meditate and find tranquility in their mind to focus.”

 

Rey pictures herself by a blast crater, hammering blows at Kylo Ren in a blind rage with her stolen lightsaber. She is no Jedi.

 

“Adhere to these principles, and let the light side of the Force flow though you,” Finn drones on, flipping the page.

 

It seems an unattainable aspiration for her – at least, without a mentor with Leia’s insight and unfaltering patience.

 

Or Luke’s. Rey often ponders how much of his outright refusal to tutor her was a conviction that the Jedi Order must die with him – and how much was her own inadequacy, or vulnerability to temptation. _You went straight to the dark. It offered you something you needed, and you didn’t even try to stop yourself._ Her inherent weakness, evident at their very first lesson _._ Rey shifts uneasily, forcing her thoughts back to the present.

 

“How… With an enemy swinging their weapon at you nonstop, where’s the opportunity to meditate?” she contests. It had worked only once, her back bowed precariously over a gaping cliff face under the weight of Kylo Ren’s blade… because he had allowed her.

 

“Uh...” Finn squints at Rose, perhaps expecting sage advice. Her expression is equally blank. “Use the Force?”

 

It’s been his fallback explanation twice this morning already.

 

Would Ben really keep his promise? _I could help you read them._ The unbidden memory comes rushing up to the surface. _He_ would have been meticulously schooled in the ways of the Jedi Order by Master Skywalker himself. Years of his life, dedicated to the pursuit of mastery over the light side of the Force. Before he reduced the sacred place that nurtured his power to a fiery graveyard, slaughtered his fellow students along with Luke’s spirit. _You need a teacher._

 

Rey beats back her dismay, smiling noncommittally. “Go on.”

 

He skims the page of scrawly Basic calligraphy, thumbing quickly through the next few. “Okay, listen - I think I’ve got your answer: A Jedi fights only as a last resort. If you are forced to draw your lightsaber, you have already forfeited much of your advantage. Trust the Force, and first seek other ways to resolve problems.”

 

“Such as?” For as long as she can remember, she has always brandished a weapon of some sort when faced with the enemy. Shoot first, or die. Kill or be killed.

 

“Patience, logic, tolerance, attentive listening -” he flips another page - “negotiation, persuasion and calming techniques.”

 

“Attentive listening,” Rey repeats sardonically, picturing Snoke’s eyes up close, glittering with sadistic glee.

 

“Swinging a laser axe at Captain Chrome Dome certainly calmed _her_ quick-smart,” Rose comments, straining to peer over his shoulder and read ahead.

 

Covering Rose’s clasped fingers with his own, Finn gives them a gentle squeeze. “You have a penchant for violence, love,” he chuckles.

 

“Yeah, yeah, _eight-seven_ ,” she teases back.

 

“ _Sanitation_ ,” he protests.

 

“I’ve heard it all before. Took becoming rebel scum to make a cold-blooded killer out of you.”

 

Finn slumps his shoulders theatrically and swivels to look back at her. “Saved _your_ ass.”

 

Rose grins. “Not exactly how _I_ remember it, but… my hero.” She kisses the tip of his broad nose, just a quick peck.

 

“You feeling better?” he asks under his breath, quietly enough that Rey thinks she isn’t supposed to hear.

 

Rose nods. “Uh-huh,” she mutters. “Whatever Peazy-Fourceeo gave me’s working a treat.”

 

A subtle smile pulls at his lips. “Good.”

 

Patting her hands, he turns back to the Aionimica, leans back into her a little, and continues to read.

 

Rey had watched them strolling toward her camp together, three radiant beings bursting with effervescence and joie de vivre. Later, when duty calls or Rey’s patience gives out, Finn and Rose will return to the Resistance base exactly as they came; fingers interlaced, bare feet falling into step along the riverbank, shoulder tips brushing. Razzing each other with the comfortable familiarity of an old, married couple. With open hands and infinite freedom, their love laid bare for all to see.

 

 _I want that,_ she thinks, a sting nipping behind her eyes.

 

Rose had taught him to love; real, starry-eyed, passionate love… along with many other life-lessons omitted in Stormtrooper training, it appears. She still doesn’t know – wouldn’t Peazy have detected it, somehow? Even the morning sickness, which seems to be all-day purging right now, hasn’t given it away. Rose is two weeks late, but has chalked it up to the psychological strain of war, their perilous existence as fugitives and uncertainty where they will be, where her next meal is coming from, from one day to the next. Bored with the drudgery of Finn’s narration, Rey has already caught herself skirting Rose’s thoughts once or twice.

 

Rey wonders for how long the flight suit will fit.

 

And what kind of a life awaits their child.

 

 

~

 

 

When the lingering twilight is obliterated by nightfall and the stars make twisted, warped shapes out of the trees, the towering forest and rolling fields of grass transform into a nightmare. Despite the cloud cover, the wintry air swirls around her, stealing every lick of warmth it can.

 

On her second night alone on Bri'n, Rey hunkers inside a sleep-cocoon ill-equipped for the freezing night, staring up at the moons peeking through a cloud-leaden sky. She had abandoned the plastene tent in favour of laying under the stars, naming the constellations until she falls asleep, but they are all but obliterated by cloud cover. She stares until the faraway voices from the Resistance’s settlement a klick away become further apart, then stop completely, until the last stubborn flames of her campfire flicker into glowing embers and wink into darkness.

 

The woodlands at night are far from silent.

 

Minutes drag into hours. Her perfidious imagination convinces her that those leaves stirring in the breeze are in fact the beating wings of a crooked Toydarian, invading her AT-AT to swindle her hoarded rations.

 

Or the approaching sandstorm of X’us’R’iia that will rattle the walls of her shelter like a toy, threatening to swallow it into a suffocating grave beneath the desert surface, and her with it. Insignificant in life, insignificant in death.

 

Or dysrhythmical footfalls; something grotesque and malevolent creeping up to her bed to hiss _koh-to-yah, tressspassser_ into her ear.

 

It’s absurd. Pla Ren’s weapon resides within easy reach in her rucksack, and even if the Kel Dor wasn’t mummifying inside a forgotten temple in the Deep Core, she could probably crush him now with nothing but her willpower.

 

But still, isolated in the dead of night, she pulls the quilted fabric tighter around her chest. The sonorous warbling of night birds and scuffling among the evergreens as unseen nocturnal beasts meander about, make her skin crawl. She imagines creatures with fantastical jaws lurking just beyond her range of vision, watching hungrily until she falls asleep.

 

Rey has survived more solo missions than she can count, but now, in self-imposed exile on a foreign planet, the solitude unnerves her more than ever.

 

Poe has condemned her for consorting with the enemy.

 

 _Frack_ him.

 

She shuts her eyes, forces her mind beyond its limits, and reaches for the crimson thread.

 

It seems that their sleep cycles are synchronised, at least for now.

 

The blackness appears first, oozing up between the spears of spongy grass carpeting the forest floor and slithering out from dark recesses in the glades and crevices in the soil. It bleeds from the shadows cast across his quarters, behind its austere furnishings. A darkness comprised of some ancient, primeval hatred, and the desolation and despair of the souls it has consumed before.

 

Ben’s huge, silhouetted form hardly stirs as he materialises before her. His eyes crack open a notch, black and heavy-lidded with the twin moons of Bri'n reflected in his pupils. A smile tugs at the corners of his lush mouth.

 

“C’mere,” he mumbles sleepily into his pillow, pulling back the shimmersilk sheets for her.

 

He’s shirtless this time, all hard muscle and ivory skin. The lines of his sculpted torso are wreathed in shadow, every contour of his broad shoulders and burly chest reflecting the dull starlight, pale as a corpse.

 

She doesn’t say a word. Shimmying out of her cocoon, she crawls across the grass and wriggles underneath his sheets. He isn’t naked, as she had wondered – her fingers ghost across the solid vee of his lower abdomen to the waistband of his sleeping pants as she slips in beside him. The sod beneath her morphs into something springy and soft, molding to their combined weight, and she presses her back into his chest, relishing the firm wall of muscle. Heat engulfs her body. She can not sense the silken cover as he rests it gently back over her shoulders, but does feel his thick arm snake around her waist, pulling her in close.

 

The clouds part, and silvery moonlight washes over them both.

 

She doesn’t _need_ this, she chides herself. It’s an indulgence; a luxury. She’s equipped with two lightsabers now, should anything threaten her. She has overcome more treacherous conditions on Jakku for most of her lifetime than anything the Bri’n forest might harbour. And neither she nor Ben know what outsiders other than Master Skywalker perceive when they are together; one of many mysteries she has fantasized about exploring with him, hazardous though it might be. What if Poe sends a bevy of recruits to check up on her?

 

And yet – secure in the cage of his arms, with his slow, even exhalations rustling her hair – it’s _all_ she needs.

 

If the Force condones this deeply-forged connection between them, who is she to question it?

 

Five standard days ago Rey fought for her life, hell-bent on ending him with his own blade. But now, for the second time this week, she allows herself to fall asleep with the Supreme Leader of the First Order cuddling her close.

 

 

~

 

 

The first coral-toned rays of sunrise rouse her half-awake. Though she can plainly see the tapestry of foliage surrounding them, there is a lavish, padded surface beneath her body, a satiny pillow under her head. The low-hanging branches of the evergreens are tipped with morning dew, but – laying uncovered on the bare turf – she feels snug and toasty warm, a much larger figure curled tight around her, her legs tangled with a pair thicker and longer than her own. Ben’s aquiline nose nuzzles her neck. His body heat seeps into her, and he comforts her without ever opening his mouth.

 

 _Stars_ – if she could have this, _every single_ night -

 

Something rigid is bobbing against her bottom. Rey bites her lip and shifts alongside it, a slow, tentative movement – this is all too new. Sharing a bed, not out of necessity, but by choice. Being touched at all without malice, outside of combat or punishment. She is still half-afraid to touch him. The tight grid of his abdomen presses into her lower back, between the ridge of his hips.

 

And… _that_.

 

It makes her feel things that she doesn’t even want to begin to approach.

 

She ought to know exactly what this is. Something from one of many salacious stories Rose, Jessika and the others always shared together in the communal ‘fresher while Rey discreetly washed herself, cheeks aflame. Gleefully bawdy tales of how to please the sterner sex, whom they fancied among the Resistance, and their sexual conquests, past and present.

 

Without thinking, she slips a hand between them, brushing it curiously over his sleeping pants. It’s smooth and rock-hard and twitches against her searching fingers. Just her soft, exploring touch is enough to elicit a sleep-muffled groan from Ben, a luscious sound from deep in his throat that makes her heart stutter. He rubs himself slowly against her, warm and languid, still asleep.

 

In the distance, a dull crack rings out, then muted laughter. Male and female voices, more than two of them. Yowling, unmistakably a Wookiee’s. Is it the wind, carrying sounds from base camp?

 

“Ben,” she whispers.

 

“Mmmh.” His full lips graze the soft spot beneath her ear, just barely brushing, but she feels a familiar coiling heat somewhere else entirely. Like when she summoned him naked in the ‘fresher, mesmerised, hands itching to touch. He splays his fingers across the flat plane of her belly.

 

“I think… they’re coming.”

 

Conversation. Still distant, but their presences in the Force are nearer.

 

The mound beneath her hand is growing larger and harder, bounding with a lazy rhythm. Every time she glides her palm across it through the fabric, she can feel his well-muscled torso tense ever-so-slightly against her back with his sharp intake of breath. Bri’n’s second sun is clearing the horizon; she cannot guess the hour, if the passage of time on this world parallels the last. But – by the grace of the Maker – couldn’t they have postponed the obligatory visit to their pack’s miscreant by another few hours?

 

Ben’s deep rumble is muffled against the nape of her neck, his breath hot on her skin. “Let-them-come.” Just his scent – amber and spice – sends her into a heady trance. His palm presses wide over her lower belly where the pulsing sensation has begun to pool, and _oh_ , if he slid those long fingers just a little lower...

 

Their bright chatter is almost audible. What will they witness – her alone in the grass, or curled up in the arms of the enemy’s sovereign ruler? Chewbacca has sworn that he will kill Kylo Ren on sight, should the opportunity present itself, to avenge his boon companion - son or no son. Stiffening at the thought, she shifts within his embrace.

 

“Don’t go,” he slurs, rocking her back against him. His shaft digs harder into her buttock.

 

They’re close now. Much too close. Seven figures, outlined against the shimmering surface of the river. Shortly they will vanish into the valley… then reemerge through the sunkissed meadow blanketing the hillside, too late to conceal -

 

“Ben!” she hisses nervously, worming free of his hold. As she rises to sit, the silken bedding seems to quiver around them then gradually condenses into a tangle of tall grass, the ground beneath her legs transmogrified into a firm, uneven surface.

 

Rey scrambles to her feet.

 

Dark shadows across the ground, oily and thick like the quagmires of Chal Hudda, tremble and begin to recede. An eerie phenomenon, discordant with the bright morning sunlight – there is nothing overhead to cast them. They coalesce toward her abandoned bedmate and sink into the soil.

 

If only she had more time, she would scamper down to the river’s edge, tumble headfirst into the shallow water and rid herself of his scent.

 

But then, if only she had time… perhaps she would have stayed exactly where she was, gently caressing, and seen what would transpire between them.

 

It’s like the dreams… those nonsensical ones that come crashing through without warning and leave her edgy and frustrated when she wakes, an urgent throbbing between her legs.

 

“Rey?” His form is translucent in the tangled thatch at her feet, whisky-coloured eyes hazy and unfocused, searching her face. She forces herself to look away, fixating studiously on the horizon - lest her gaze wander back to his wide, sculpted chest, marked with the scars he has collected over the years. Ben’s thoughts are tinged with confusion. He clearly has no lucid memory of how she came to be here. For one head-spinning second, she sees an image of herself through his perceptions, standing weightlessly atop his mattress with mud-caked feet leaving no footprints, gawking at the lacquered black wall of his sleeping chamber.

 

Poe might be among them. She has seconds, maybe a minute, to rummage through her rucksack, pluck out the accursed collar and snap it around her neck. The cuffs… broken. _Kriff._ Her heartbeat thumps harder with every suspended moment.

 

Steeling herself, she locks eyes with him. “Ben I’m sorry you have to go don’t pull me back please don’t pull me back they’re coming and I can’t get caught with...” The words tumble out of her mouth before she can stop them. She sounds like a plaintive child.

 

He’s fading, regardless. The faintest shape of him remains in the grass, propped up on one elbow. He spears a wounded look at her through the bond and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly.

 

“I… I don’t want this,” he says, oddly quiet. “I want you here.”

 

There’s an errant pang in her chest. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs again, focusing again on the hillside where it disappears from view toward the waterline.

 

After a few strained moments, she feels Ben’s dismay wane into acceptance. With a forbearing sigh, he dissolves completely.

 

Not a moment too soon.

 

Shuffling footfalls through grassland, running towards her. Excited voices and the energetic whistling of an astromech.

 

“Rey!” cries Karé, almost drowned out by Chewie’s delighted roar.

 

Rey offers a terse smile and opens her arms to them all. It’s Snap Wexley and his wife, Chewbacca, C’ai, Wedge, Finn and Kaydel. They engulf her in a group hug, a sweaty, excited mess of tangled limbs and mumbled reassurances and shaggy Wookiee fur. All come bearing supplies – more rations, a hairbrush, a survival tool. None seem to care, or even notice, that she is uncollared.

 

They’re no longer `famous,’ Snap reports jubilantly; they may walk proudly among the masses, bounties rescinded. Rey holds her tongue. The lieutenant had hinted at it earlier, aboard the shuttle, but Rey already knows this for certain. _H_ _e_ told her.

 

She stands among her compatriots and apart from them, strangely empty, as though part of her has dissolved into thin air.

 

By all means she is welcome to return to base camp, on the proviso that she is escorted at all times, wears restraints, and relinquishes any weapons. General Dameron’s orders, until she is thoroughly questioned and exonerated of any wrongdoing. He knows where she is. They all know. On some level, it hurts that Poe has not yet sought her out; occupied with more pressing matters now as leader of the Resistance than inviting her back into the fold. A wannabe Jedi Knight is not his priority.

 

She cannot imagine him ever conceding defeat and surrendering to an autocracy, even in the face of such dismal futility. However he intends to lead her friends against the First Order now - she fears for their future.

 

Again, she remains tight-lipped.

 

Within minutes, Rey’s tiny campsite becomes a bustling hub of activity: unpacking satchels and fishing spears, hunting for kindling and firewood, rebuilding the campfire.

 

They share hot tarine tea and stories of exotic worlds in the Calaron Sector they visited during their last supply run, and want to know all about their Jedi Knight’s adventures in the Deep Core, hanging on her every word. With an elated astromech rolling about her in concentric circles and beeping out an excited stream of droidspeak, it is hard to stay detached.

 

After a time, her smile comes more naturally, and this strange utopia begins to feel a little more like home.

 

 

~

 

 

As promised, Finn hangs back to spar with her while the late afternoon suns dip into the horizon, casting everything in a fiery golden hue. The others are long gone, returned to camp.

 

Rey forces herself to hold back. As always, Force-pushes are not allowed; all of her sparring partners – save for one – have always agreed it affords her an unfair advantage. Even with her self-imposed handicap, however, it’s as though everything is happening in slow motion.

 

Finn throws one punch after another. His swift uppercuts, jabs and right hooks are easy to anticipate from his stance, but their actual execution is infuriatingly slow, almost sluggish. His kicks and tackling attempts are even worse. They have trained together often enough that Finn’s fight choreography has become familiar, but this is ridiculous. She goads him to strike faster, more vigorously, mix up his attacks.

 

She tries closing her eyes, then Finn blindfolds her, insisting she must be peeking.

 

None of it makes any difference. Rey upends him without cheating, every single time.

 

Maybe it was the temple on Tython, or fighting against Kylo Ren, or wielding his weapon – but she feels ten times stronger now than after they left Peveron. More attuned to the Force. Snoke’s declaration, spoken the day he died, resounds in her memory. _Darkness rises, and light to meet it._

 

“I can’t even _see_ you,” Finn complains after the umpteenth time, prostrated in the grass. She’s lost count.

 

Rey stifles a smile. “I can’t see you either,” she quips, pointing at the desert wrap knotted securely over her face. It isn’t entirely true; she perceives Finn’s bright presence in the Force, whistling air and movement when he lunges to attack.

 

“Oh, har-dee-ha ha, peanut.” He climbs stiffly to his feet. “No, it’s like… there’s Rey, and then there’s a grey blur, and then I get knocked flat again.”

 

“I’ll try to go slower,” she offers.

 

“Are you kidding me? This is for your benefit, not mine. I’ve still got rifle range and melee combat practice with the recruits during the day. I’ll just bring more thugs along for you tomorrow night.” She can hear the grin in his voice. “Let’s try the sabers.”

 

Finn’s `sabers’ are carved massassi-wood batons just over a metre in length, one painted blue, one green. Naturally, he always claims the master’s saber for himself.

 

Still blindfolded, Rey cycles smoothly through the Shii-Cho zones of defense and attack, imagining herself lost in an ak-tree forest on the wrong side of Tython. The concept of drilling the velocities is well beyond a former Stormtrooper. The fifth time she floors him, Finn hesitantly suggests refastening the neural disruptor collar, reducing her to a `mere mortal’ so that he might stand a chance.

 

 

~

 

 

At daybreak on her third full day of isolation on Bri’n, Rey clips her two weapons to her belt, shoulders her satchel and sets out upriver, following the meandering watercourse through rolling fields of grass. Farkled if she will spend another day procrastinating and plodding through the Texts, patiently awaiting an emissary from Poe. The suns are gentler here than the searing heat of Jakku. Ribbons of golden light spill through the forest canopy, pleasantly warming her skin.

 

This unknown planet is truly breathtaking, verdant green and vibrant, humming with the living Force. Everything feels fresh and new and full of possibility.

 

Her senses drink in the ambient energy that is everywhere and she stops often, laying her hands flat against tree trunks, touching wildflower petals, skimming a palm across the velvety moss overlaying rotting logs. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Everything she sees, she feels compelled to touch, to connect with and to feel the Force. Her fingertips tingle with it. She feels uplifted, present for that gift that is living, allowing it to become intense.

 

Hours later, having not encountered a single soul, the distant sound of rushing water greets her ears and she quickens her pace. As she approaches, anticipating some gargantuan machine and signs of civilisation, the faraway rumbling builds to a roar.

 

Nearing its source, Rey halts, stunned. She has never seen such a spectacle.

 

Before her eyes, a thundering tower of silver-white water spills from the heavens, cascading over a high rocky outcrop and plunging into the churning pool at its base. Liquid gold, in magnificent abundance. Never in her lifetime could Rey have possibly conceived anything like it. The sheer power of the falls transmits vibrations through the rocks beneath her boots.

 

She gapes at it, awestruck. A magical phenomenon of nature, defying the laws of physics like the floating mountain of Endor, or the rock gardens of Ryloth that Leia so vividly described, soaring in the wind against gravity. The idea that _so much water_ could exist in the entire universe, isolated in this place like a priceless gemstone for her to scavenge.

 

Rey won’t waste another moment. She kneels on tumbled rocks by the shoreline, dipping her cupped hands into the pool and bringing them to her lips. It tastes sweeter and more invigorating than anything she has swallowed before, and suddenly everything she has ever been through is worth it, just for this, to have led her here.

 

Checking her surroundings – no eyes watching, no ears listening – she decides to allow herself this one indulgence.

 

Within minutes, her satchel, socks and Govath-wool boots are tossed into a careless pile. She slips her weapons into the bag and shucks her clothing, leaving her standing by the bank in only her standard-issue breastband and drawers. The pool beyond the base of the falls is enticing, turquoise and crystal-clear like glass, lapping invitingly at her toes.

 

While she survived the sea cave on Ahch-To, she is still wary of water. Her eyes fall to its mirror-smooth surface once more. She wants to be in the water, under it, gliding like a glimmerfish from one bank to the next, more than her next breath. Her skill with swimming consists of wild thrashing and panicked efforts to keep her head above water… but this does not look so terribly deep.

 

Testing the water temperature with one big toe, a squeal of delight escapes her lips. It’s wonderfully brisk. She finds herself laughing at the mindless hedonism of her situation, about to submerge herself in a pool of life-giving elixir after countless years of bartering and trading and stealing for every drop.

 

Throwing caution to the wind, she charges forward into the pool and plunges in. The icy water against her skin makes her shudder, but she dunks her head under nevertheless, determined to experience and savour everything this heavenly place has to offer. For a moment she holds her breath, completely submerged, and opens her eyes underwater; the pool is so translucent, she can see schools of tiny, silvery fish twisting and wiggling beneath the reflective surface. Stretching her toes to touch the rocks below, she bobs lazily underwater, escaping the dull drag of gravity.

 

She would never have believed this much beauty could exist in the whole galaxy.

 

If only Finn and the others were here to share this marvel with her.

 

If only… if only _Ben_ was here _._

 

She wonders how long it has been since he called anything other than the sterile interior of a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer home. How long since his alabaster skin last saw sunlight, since he lay under the stars or frolicked in a secret mere in the middle of nowhere, as she is doing now.

 

Breaking the surface, she blows a jet of fresh water from her mouth and pushes dripping tendrils of hair back from her forehead. It must be her waterlogged ears – all sound fades for a second, and the tiny hairs at the back of her neck prickle.

 

“You said there were eight.” His voice comes as a deep, velvety rumble behind her, just beyond the bank where she entered. She can barely hear him above the thunderous column of water. “A command shuttle will accommodate fifteen.”

 

Rey whirls about to face him, almost inhaling a lungful of liquid.

 

“Reinforcements, then,” Ben continues coldly, his audience unseen. He stands with his back to her, his posture and bearing befitting of royalty, clad in a quilted black tunic and fitted leather breeches tucked into black boots. His sweeping, inky cloak brushes against wet stone. He looks every part the menacing imperial ruler.

 

Instinctively, she recoils, splashing the water’s surface a little. As she does so, his spine stiffens and he glances up distractedly, but does not turn around.

 

“You would trust our lives and theirs to a craft constructed by slaves?” he spits, and begins to pace back and forth, knee-high leather boots holding firm on mossy, water-slicked rock.

 

Rey sinks down into the pool, feeling its gelid surface envelop her shoulders and neck, ripples gently caressing the underside of her chin. Were she to focus harder, perhaps she could discern his surroundings - but her own environment is so breathtakingly beautiful this time that she would be content just to have him here with her. Even if it is an illusion.

 

Ben’s gaze flits momentarily to hers and his pensive gait falters for a fraction of a second, almost unnoticeably. His umber eyes flash and she knows, beyond doubt, that he senses her.

 

“Two days!” he barks at an invisible underling. “I will expect answers. _Ma-allesh_.” He makes a strange gesture, tapping one gloved fist twice over his heart then extending the flat of his palm to the glade beyond the pool. Having concluded his negotiation, he pivots to face her, black cloak swirling behind his boots. He looks bone-weary, the circles under his eyes a shade darker than she is used to seeing.

 

 _Are you alone?_ she thinks at him.

 

His frown deepens.

 

Then, she understands; he cannot perceive her surroundings. A disembodied head resting on the polished obsidian floor. It must be terribly disconcerting for him. She smirks at the thought.

 

 _Yes._ He's rigid, stock-still, his dark eyes intent and focused.

 

_Concentrate, Ben. I want you to see this._

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Rey plods gracelessly toward him, extending an inviting hand as she emerges from the crystal-clear water. Perhaps he might feel the moisture on her skin, even if he is incognizant of the exquisite beauty of her environment. He does not reach back.

 

“Can you see it?” she asks breathlessly, hauling herself forward against the rush of water trying to drag her limbs back into its depths. Another flash from his thoughts has her fighting the urge to snigger at their connection’s illusion – a body rising out of the deck, saturated and dripping. In her childish frenzy, it is too easy to overlook that she is standing aboard the Supreme Leader’s flagship _and_ on the rocky bank.

 

“I can see… you.” His lips quiver around the last word.

 

"I was swimming!” she exclaims proudly, pointing to the majestic tower of falling water, utterly bewitched. Sunlight catches the spray, making the droplets shimmer like diamonds. “I found a… a..." Waving her hands impatiently, she tries to think of how to encompass the magnitude of this natural wonder in words. It seems impossible. Resorting to sign language instead, she positions her fingers to emulate the crest of the watercourse alongside the rock formation.

 

"There’s a rock face with.... Oh, Ben, there's so much water! It's so loud!” Her cupped fingers trace a graceful curve, a fluid motion of her wrist and elbow, trying in vain to imitate water tumbling over the edge.

 

“You’re yelling,” he remarks wryly, glancing about the forest as though others might be eavesdropping.

 

"Like a veil.... I wish you could see it,” she concludes, her own voice barely audible above the rushing water. Her description has done it no justice at all, not captured even one-tenth of its grandeur. _I wish you were here,_ she refrains to add, but he hears it all the same.

 

“I wish...” he begins, then stops himself. An odd expression crosses his face. He has not followed her excited stare into the distance; instead, his dark, liquid eyes linger on her.

 

Rey worries her lower lip between her teeth. In all her mindless exhilaration, she has overlooked her state of undress.

 

Ben has not.

 

His eyes roam up and down her wet, scantily clad form, lingering at her lips, her breastband - where her nipples have hardened through thin fabric in the freezing water, her hips. "A waterfall," he says offhandedly after a moment or two, entirely unmoved. She squirms uneasily, feeling naked, appraised.

 

A waterfall – that makes sense. He has probably witnessed a great many like it in his travels, infinitely more breathtaking and magnificent even than this.

 

Along with a great many voluptuous women, she imagines, of whom he has probably partaken in every sense of the word - with generous breasts and sensual curves and… _Force_ , what was she _thinking_? Crossing her arms self-consciously over the soaked bindings covering her small bosom, she tries desperately not to remember the narco-spice dealer’s crude assessment. If she skims a hand down her torso, she can count her ribs easily, fingers dipping between them. Littered with scars, too skinny. _No tits to speak of. A pauper’s whore. No one wants to screw a disfigured -_

 

“Rey,” he interrupts sharply.

 

She flushes down to her toes, all of her wet, goosefleshed skin suddenly too hot.

 

“You don’t… believe that, do you?”

 

Covering as much of her chest as possible with her arms, she buries her face in her hands, wanting to disappear behind them. “Get out of my head,” she mumbles into her palms, her face blazing scarlet. She only wanted to share a kriffing _waterfall_ with him and he’s already in her thoughts and now _this_ -

 

Ben steps closer, gloved fingers closing around her upper arms.

 

“Look at me,” he says gruffly after a moment.

 

She can’t. Here she is, a scrawny scavenger clad in dripping rags, cowering before the Supreme Leader in all his imperial finery, ready to conquer worlds and strengthen his dominion. Her blush deepens under his scrutiny.

 

“Look at me,” he entreats again, his voice rough.

 

Rey hazards a peek between her fingers, feeling his dark gaze boring down on her. She’s shivering, from the frigid water or pure embarrassment or both, as Ben flattens one hand against the curve of her shoulder, stark leather warm against her skin. His features hold nothing but admiration and quiet yearning, just the hint of a tic beneath his left eye. The jagged scar that cleaves his right cheek is raised and puckered, she observes, struck by a sudden, bizarre urge to touch it, trace its ridge with her fingertip all the way down to his collarbone. _Her_ scar.

 

“That’s garbage, and he was a blind fool,” he begins, deep and breathy, that tone he seems to use only with her. “Every part of you is... perfect.”

 

 _I would have no other,_ he adds silently through the bond. His candid admission surprises them both. The thought makes her want to fall into his arms and run as far away as her legs will carry her in equal measure.

 

This conversation can’t be happening.

 

“I have something for you,” she blurts out. She can not – will not – show vulnerability.

 

Ben narrows his eyes, as probing as ever, but gently releases her. Dropping to her haunches by his boots, Rey snatches up her satchel. She grabs her tunic first, tugging it clumsily over her sodden torso where it rolls and bunches over the breastband. Once concealed, she reaches into the bag’s front pocket, careful to avoid spilling all of its invaluable contents across the rocks for him to see. Her fingers close around something delicate and metallic.

 

“Close your eyes,” she commands, feigning a playful tone.

 

He hesitates, searching her face for signs of duplicity, but finally obeys. Bereft of sight, she feels his mind extending again for hers; not the barrage from before in the jungle, but curious, inquisitive. Allowing him just a sliver – the imprint of a thundering waterfall – she takes one of his huge hands between hers, places his prize in the centre of his palm and closes his fingers around it.

 

This _has_ to work. Ben’s training saberstaff had remained tangible and solid, passed from hand to hand across millions of parsecs.

 

Releasing him, she clasps her hands together behind her back like a soldier standing at ease. “You can open them now.”

 

Ben unfurls his fingers, sucking in a sharp breath as he recognises Han’s gold dice, linked by a gleaming chain. It doesn’t feel right for her to hoard them when they could belong to the man who might cherish them the most. A token, she prays he will understand, that not everything has been lost. He lifts his palm to his face in disbelief, fingertips trembling.

 

“They’re yours,” she insists after several beats of his stupefied silence, absently tilting his upraised hand to roll the linked cubes. His expression is inscrutable.

 

The Force around him jitters and spikes, then all at once begins churning crazily, like a storm-wracked sea.

 

After a long, stretched-out moment, he reaches for her arm and draws it from behind her back. His long fingers encircle her wrist, presenting her open palm. There, he returns the dice, curling her fist back around them.

 

Was it a mistake? Does he not understand, it’s a symbol of hope? What else could he think it is?

 

Another blinding image assaults her senses: an exuberant toddler forever tailing his father, clutching golden dice and promising anyone who will listen that one day he, too, will be a pilot, just like Han Solo.

 

A grim realisation dawns on her… it’s a memento of his patricide _._

 

"I… Gods… I'm sorry..." she stutters, her face burning again. But he is still holding her hand. His gloved thumb brushes against the sensitive skin at the inside of her wrist.

 

"For what?" he asks, low and gentle.

 

She shifts her weight from one leg to the other.

 

"I just... I thought you might like to have..."

 

"I would, Rey.” His gaze never falters from hers, and she watches emotions chase themselves across his face. Grief. Remorse. Loneliness. But he is not angry, as she had feared. “And I will. When you give them to me in person."

 

She blinks at him. The words stir something inside, quickening her pulse.

 

“Where are you?” he murmurs, so close now that she can hear him over the rushing water. His ebony irises flicker back and forth between her own.

 

Rey thinks of spearfishing, woolly hugs and enlivened conversation, those loyal few whom she will never betray, no matter the cost. Her voice is a weak, pitiful thing. “I’m nowhere.”

 

Ben moves closer, his big hands coming to settle on her hips, almost spanning her small waist. “Come to me, then,” he implores, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, she wants that more than anything – to cast it all aside, all the guilt, unwanted responsibility and undeserved punishment, and follow her heart.

 

“I couldn’t live with myself if I abandoned them,” she protests softly.

 

There’s a pause; a stiffness to his hold. His lips brush her temple so faintly she can barely feel it, a phantom imprint of an almost-kiss. “I could never force you,” he whispers against her skin. “It’s your choice.”

 

Rey lifts her hands to his shoulders, pushing him out at arm’s length. She can feel his ardour vividly across the bond. They’ve reached an impasse. They stare at each other in an odd way, as if in a silent argument. Ben’s pursed lips and steely gaze are the picture of dejection, so heart-wrenchingly forlorn; just like the previous morning, waking beside her in his sleeper with no memory of anything before, and Rey severing herself from him almost immediately.

 

It’s unbearable.

 

She can’t leave him like this, with nothing. This moment will not be washed away; it is too precious to ruin. She wants it set, colour-fast, indelible.

 

So she kisses him.

 

It’s the way the dreams start, sometimes. Bodies melting, lips fitting together like puzzle pieces, fireworks below her belly.

 

But they’re just dreams. In reality, she’s unpracticed, hopelessly clumsy.

 

She has never attempted anything like this before and refuses to compare it with Poe’s forcible advances that dug her teeth painfully into the insides of her lips. It always came so naturally to the people in holodramas she discovered aboard junked spacecraft.

 

At her first attempt, her eyes fall closed and she stands on tiptoe, tilting her chin expectantly. Isn’t he supposed to close the distance now…?

 

He doesn’t, so she stretches up further; her mouth abuts the strong curve of his cheekbone, formal and mechanical like a dignitary’s greeting. It’s all wrong. Their noses bump awkwardly as she withdraws.

 

Determined, she tries again. The second time, his big nose jams into her eye and her puckered lips scrape against the rough skin at his jawline, missing their mark entirely. Just as ungainly as the first.

 

She has never analysed the mechanics of a kiss, even stealing surreptitious glimpses at Snap and Karé together, Finn and Rose, so tender and easy. She presumed it would be instinctual. Bracing for a third attempt, she keeps her eyes open wide and slams her mouth earnestly into Ben’s. Initially she is much too forceful – their teeth clack together and she feels him wincing under her lips – then, overly timid, hardly making contact. She’s too short and he towers over her, and she’s probably hurting him, her fingers digging into his shoulders to push herself higher.

 

Somewhere in between bumbling efforts, Rey realises he is not reciprocating. Making no effort to kiss her back.

 

After three mortifying failures, sombre and unsmiling, he gently pushes her away.

 

_Kriff._

 

In an instant, her impulsive rush of passion has been smothered by embarrassment. Rey turns away to glare down at the water, mute with horror.

 

Of _course_ he doesn’t want her. Her foolhardy sentiments are unrequited. She misconstrued everything; his bacta patch and cuddles and stupid, _stupid_ morning hard-on that Jessika said happens to _all men_ and means _nothing_. Maybe it is a kinship that he seeks, a brotherly connection between two Force-sensitive beings, united in mourning. _I_ _mb_ _e_ _cile_ , she castigates herself, cleaving the astral thread.

 

Obviously her hormone-driven, overactive imagination has run wild – yet she could swear she senses a note of regret from Ben as his Force-signature vanishes behind her back.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quote:** Kurt Vonnegut, _Mother Night_ (1961). “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
> 
> Aionimica passages inspired by [WP page - Jedi](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jedi)


	19. Bxe7 Qb6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The power of the dark side is an illness of which he never wishes to be cured. It hums discordant in his bones, but he grits his teeth, bending the Force to his will. Breaking it.

 

 

Misshapen and deformed, the object of Kylo's fervour listens without judgement, just as it always has. He keeps the alcove dim, kneels and confesses in hushed tones. It knows he has failed as leader of the Knights. It knows of his betrayal. It knows that he watched the scavenger girl sleep after particularly brutal kills, when his last thread of sanity began to unravel. One solar cycle ago, he professed that he felt it again - the pull to the light. Always to Grandfather; never to Snoke. He'd sworn to Master Snoke that he was immune to the light. By the grace of his training, he would not be seduced.

 

And then he touched her hand, and saw a fate more wondrous than he could possibly have hoped for.

 

Interpreting visions of the future is a dangerous game.

 

The Force offers Kylo fleeting glimpses of a future that is not fixed or immutable. Nothing set in stone, but merely possibilities that he himself could bring about. Things that he longs for, that dominate his hopes and fears.

 

He foresaw Byt’s mutilation and Kira’s slaughter, not understanding at the time that by consigning them to Master Snoke, he would be blameworthy for both.

 

Skywalker sensed the darkness in Ben and presumed his fate was preordained – brandishing his lightsaber against a sleeping boy, ultimately making his choice for him.

 

When she first clasped his hand, Rey envisioned his return to the light, and so she assumed – incorrectly – that murdering his Master was the same as rejecting the pull of the darkness.

 

Even Snoke was fallible. At the zenith of his rulership, he failed to anticipate that his so-called worthy apprentice’s compassion for another could outgrow an obsessive desire for power. It would be his undoing.

 

_Don’t do this, Ben. Please don’t go this way._

 

The Force promised she would stand with him. He’d been blindsided by her refusal. Abandoned by everyone she held dear, her comrades-in-arms whittled down to almost none – even then, she clung naively to the light. Choosing it over him. She will _always_ value the Resistance above him. He often wonders why she let him live that day, escaping the desecrated throne room as he lay, unconscious, on the floor.

 

In the end, try as he might, the Force shall have its way.

 

Darth Vader's countenance neither argues nor agrees, only continues to preside silently over the ashes of those Kylo has slain. Slipping Leia's promise ring beneath it, he rises to his feet and strides away.

 

 

~

 

 

As Kylo’s first step toward the betterment of his dominion, Kopecz has tasked him with a simple supply run to a slave settlement in the Mid Rim. It’s a menial assignment. Supply runs are of no significance to Kylo Ren; a gross underutilisation of his capacity as Supreme Leader. He had expected that his Knight would want to orchestrate an attack on the Ryloth Hutts for enslaving his race, or something of a similar magnitude.

 

Kopecz has insisted on taking an unmarked Ukian shuttle with slaves as crew, refusing any support craft or anything identifiable as First Order, including uniforms. For this voyage, their anonymity is of utmost importance. It seems an absurd, unnecessary risk. He had also balked at Kylo’s proposal of sending a transporter of Stormtroopers in their place for such a lowly mission. _Are you so unmoved by the plight of your subjects, my lord?_

 

Something about the chilling lifelessness in his brother’s eyes, however, his slumped posture and bleak demeanour where there once was a proud, bullish Jedi padawan who stood tall in the face of every challenge, gave him pause.

 

After all, it was Kylo who asked for guidance.

 

He allows it. Just this one concession.

 

 

~

 

 

He can sense Rey’s chagrin plainly through the bond, but she does not reappear to him for two standard days. His half-hearted pushes against her mental walls have been futile. They hold fast every time, but a shining tendril of her energy still curls alongside his own Force-signature, and it brings him hope.

 

So he waits.

 

When she finally does appear, Kopecz is aboard the Finalizer, briefing him for their journey to Mesa Outpost. She clutches a thick, weighty tome to her chest; unmistakeably one of the Sacred Texts. At that telltale shift in the Force when all sound deadens and his skin prickles, the Twi’lek abruptly stops speaking and listens, his yellow eyes surveying the command bridge.

 

Rey is staring directly at him, stock-still and utterly stricken.

 

Regardless of whether she can actually see his Knight or only perceive an aberration in the Force, unsettlingly, Kopecz also seems aware that something in his immediate vicinity has changed.

 

His brow furrows. “We are not alone, my lord,” he mutters softly.

 

At the low rumble of his voice, her mouth falls agape. She vanishes instantly.

 

For a beat, neither of them speak.

 

Kopecz eyes him quizzically as he draws himself up to his full height beside the holotank. His lekku twist apart and hover, as if testing the atmosphere for superphysical vibrations.

 

“Did you sense it, sire?”

 

Keeping a neutral expression, Kylo erects an iron-fast wall, resolutely shutting out the Twi’lek’s prying mind. “I felt nothing. Focus on the task at hand.”

 

There’s a brief flash of suspicion on his azure features. He raises an eyebrow at Kylo’s clipped tone.

 

“Continue,” Kylo commands sharply, a cold steeliness to his posture.

 

The Knight nods and obliges without question.

 

He will need to be more careful. That was much too close.

 

 

~

 

 

Alone in his quarters hours later, Kylo positions himself cross-legged on the deck, slows his breathing and lets his senses drift.

 

He’s deferred her for long enough.

 

He senses Kopecz aboard the battlecruiser, not quite asleep, but in something closer to a trance-like state. His awareness expands to encompass the entirety of the Finalizer and its crew, then farther, touching the minds of inhabitants on the planets hurtling past in hyperspace. A constant hum of mediocrity, from single-celled organisms to sentient creatures; aspiring to nothing but satiating their own selfish desires, survival at the expense of everything and everyone else. Reaching further still, he perceives two particular signatures burning brilliantly in the Force. One is a soft, white sphere enveloping the entire Abrion Sector; he knows it to be Kluub Ren’s.

 

The other blazes with blinding intensity and whirling colour like a supanova, outshining all else.

 

It’s in the Bakura Sector.

 

If he sharpens his focus, he thinks, he could narrow it down to a single system, a single planet, a single _point._

 

Kylo grasps the astral thread, drawing it into him.

 

Maybe she has been waiting all this time. Plucking the same decaying book from empty air, she shifts her weight nervously from one foot to the other and bites her lip; her gaze flits around his chamber, focusing on anywhere but him. A rosy flush stains her cheeks as he stares at her with controlled fascination, and her Force-signature exudes embarrassment.

 

He hadn’t known what to do with the dice. The memories they evoked of Han Solo were… too raw. Overwhelming. A memento of everything he shunned to become Kylo Ren, and that cocky face and crooked grin that had made him giggle so many times as a child, contorted in surprise and pain. Kylo knew the instant he did it that he had committed an unforgivable atrocity, that his mother would feel it across the cosmos like a spear through her heart. If he had felt the pull to the light before, killing Han Solo amplified it a hundredfold.

 

His patricide meant nothing to Master Snoke. It went unrewarded. _You’re no Vader. You’re just a chil_ _d. I_ _n a mask._

 

Some things should be left buried. Kylo wasn’t prepared for her gift, albeit an innocent gesture. He couldn’t bear to watch the dice fade in his hand again.

 

And as he contemplated his futile effort to sever his last connection to the light, she had tried to kiss him.

 

Badly.

 

He had been unresponsive, and she, unpractised. Rey’s fingertips left wet prints on his tunic; he had wiped moisture from his face and stared at the droplets, beaded on his leather-clad palm, from a waterfall many systems away.

 

Perhaps this is why she can barely look at him now, but she still came back, as tenacious as ever, hoping he will follow through with his promise to help her study the Sacred Texts.

 

“Can you see my surroundings?” he greets her after a long, tight-lipped silence, if only to break the awkward lull. “I still can’t see yours. Just you.”

 

She gulps, avoiding his gaze. “Some.”

 

She’s fully clothed this time, an oversized sackcloth robe draped about her body. He remembers when she witnessed him naked in the ‘fresher, the way she had gasped behind his back… and lingered. Revulsion, surprise, or… something else? Maybe they are even now, he muses. None of his past lovers have been entirely _human_ – a violet-skinned Keshiri, a voluptuous Squamatan-human cross-breed woman with reptilian eyes and a forked tongue, a chalky-white Sarkhai. Rey’s lithe body, dripping from the serenity pool, was unlike any he has ever seen. Tanned and lean and corded with muscle… captivating… perfect.

 

He wanted her to be his first. It had taken every bit of self-restraint he possessed to keep from stripping off his gloves and touching her everywhere, and then she went and fracking _kissed_ him.

 

“Tell me what you saw. Before.”

 

Rey fixates on her boots. “A… a black hole. A void.” _I’m sorry._ Her fingers drum nervously on the book’s leather binding. “With yellow eyes.” _I don’t know what I did wrong._ “I think… I think maybe it saw me.” _I wanted -_

 

“It doesn’t matter,” he replies softly, and she looks up at him, confused.

 

“I didn’t ask for this… this connection thing between us,” she mumbles. “Any of it.”

 

Kylo’s dark eyes bore into her, memories of their last conversation rattling deep. “You don’t want this.”

 

“Not what I said.” Her voice is tight in her throat. She crosses her arms defensively over her chest with the book underneath them. “Will you still…?”

 

“Teach you. Yes.”

 

“Now?”

 

“Yes, if you wish.”

 

Her rigid posture relaxes a little. “You can’t see anything?” she asks wistfully. “It _is_ beautiful here, Ben.”

 

“Where?”

 

There’s a pause, and Rey levels him with a sharp gaze, wordless.

 

He shakes his head dismissively, but shrugs out of his thick gaberwool cloak, tossing it onto the mattress. The ambient temperature seems to have risen within his quarters, and there is a faintly perceptible scent – rich soil, lush vegetation, the faint, honeyed perfume of flowers.

 

“Shall we begin?” He nods toward the decrepit Text.

 

For a fraught moment, neither speak. A million things hang unspoken between them: neither may ask questions about the other’s location, activities or plans; the First Order and the Resistance alike are taboo subjects. She will not come to him. He will not demand it. Her bumbling attempts at intimacy and ill-conceived gift are studiously ignored. If anything, she seems relieved.

 

Their study together is casual, but structured. This particular volume of Skywalker’s covers a myriad of topics: ancient history, combat strategies and the mythology of the Jedi Order. Rey prefers sprawling on her front on the obsidian floor, propped up on her elbows with the book open between them, to the more traditional writing desk he offers. She contends that she will fall through the chair, or the Text will pass through the desktop, as though both were holograms. Each time she reaches to turn a page, the book materialises before him; when she releases it, it vanishes. As much as he would like to experiment - seizing her wrist and scurrying through the Finalizer again like unruly younglings - there is an undertone of formality about this meeting, student-to-teacher, that precludes such frivolity.

 

He watches her mouth move when she reads, those perfect, pink lips, and thinks what a fool he is. If the opportunity presents itself again, he will not squander it.

 

“Tell me what this means: `We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be,’” she asks, after struggling through the first chapter.

 

His brow creases. “That passage isn’t from this volume.”

 

“...No.” Seeming surprised at the clarity of his recall, her hazel eyes widen admiringly. “It’s from the Aionimica. But I still want to know.”

 

“You’ve been studying,” he remarks, pleased.

 

“I have.”

 

“What have you learned?”

 

Rey peers up at him. Her thoughts read of curiosity and discouragement, self-doubt that the placid mindset of the Jedi could ever be adopted after a lifetime of clawing through the sinking sands and scrapyards of Jakku, each day a struggle for survival. Poetic phraseology that is indecipherable.

 

“Please answer the question,” she shoots back instead.

 

Kylo pictures his helmet, gleaming chrome on black songsteel, its inbuilt vocoder transforming him into something more machine than man. Ensheathing his pallid, scarred skin in layer upon layer of inky fabric, leather gloves, leaving not a sliver exposed. The costume belonging to a persona that Master Snoke assigned him, christening him Kylo Ren; a character he embodied, then surpassed.

 

He says nothing, but Rey hears it all.

 

Satisfied, she returns her attention to the text.

 

She reads aloud while Kylo paces his chamber, or hovers over her, pronouncing the pretentious vocabulary and phrases that she struggles with, explaining the arcane scriptures when she is uncertain. She is easily frustrated by the overblown language, he notes, but for a man with a temper as fragile as glass, he is endlessly patient with her.

 

He quickly learns that her thirst for knowledge and keen intellect are nothing short of remarkable. She is an avid pupil, retaining everything she reads. After each passage, her questions – which he will calmly answer for as long as is necessary, when she does not understand – demonstrate extraordinary insight. He finds himself fantasising about what it would have been like to have her with him at the Jedi Temple, one of his fellow padawans.

 

After nearly three hours and three-quarters of the Text, purely for ease of reading over her shoulder, he stops pacing and sits next to her on the floor, cross-legged.

 

As Rey continues to read, he pictures the melted relic of Vader’s legendary helmet, salvaged from his funeral pyre, which still resides in the adjacent chamber. The one he has prayed to for strength so many times. To resist the pull to the light.

 

Like the radiant light sprawled beside him right now, whose freckled shoulder is just barely brushing his. He's been staring at it for... probably too long.

 

 

~

 

 

 _Seven days_ , he warned her before their departure, neglecting to explain why. He would never implore her to join them on Bothawui, not if it is the hellscape of violence and depravity that Kopecz foretold. Nor will he risk his Sith brother becoming aware of the Supreme Leader communing with one who represents everything he abhors.

 

Their freighter for transportation to the Mid Rim is a unique plexisteel hybrid, its body a bulbous structure reminiscent of a miniature Mon Calamari starcruiser with four peripheral docking stations like a bunkerbuster, and a crescent-shaped structure for the command centre at its bow. It appears to have been constructed from cobbled-together scrap parts, probably salvaged from a starship graveyard. Its hull sports the red-and-black semicircles of the Crimson Dawn insignia painted with an amateurish hand, readily identifiable as a fake from close range. Kopecz assures him it is for ease of passage through Bothawui’s atmosphere, should they encounter any genuine Crimson Dawn spacecraft or rogue starfighters en route. His shuttle is unmarked, untrackable.

 

The Knight at least conceded to Lieutenant Mitaka piloting, rather than any of the three liveried crewmembers whom Kluub Ren has provided. `Sinya’s slaves,’ Kopecz calls them offhandedly. Kylo does not trust any of them.

 

He doesn’t know what to expect of their three standard day voyage to Mesa Outpost: the easy camaraderie he used to enjoy with Byt during their thirteen solar cycles of training at the temple, or a role reversal, with Kopecz barking orders at him and the crew.

 

Instead, the Twi’lek isolates himself in his meagre quarters for the entirety of the journey.

 

After their shuttle has lurched into hyperspace, miraculously intact, Kylo paces through its passageways, inspecting the welding and hatches and metalwork. The rooms inside are beautiful, a mishmash of different styles, as is what happens when you slice and dice ten different ships and solder them back together. For a craft assembled from junked components with slave labour, it is surprisingly well-made, its interior as sleek and modern as any Resurgent-class battlecruiser. 

 

Historically, slaves do not much care for the welfare of their masters.

 

Kopecz has selected the pod furthest from the command centre as his sleeping chamber. As Kylo strides past, its pneumatic doors slide open. Oblivious to his ruler’s presence, the Knight is kneeling on the deck with his back to the doorway, head bowed and hands clasped in prayer. Kylo can feel the night-black power rolling over him, subdued in worship but very much present. An assortment of trinkets are arranged before him on the mattress: a glowrod fashioned to resemble a candle, an ornately engraved Sith holocron and a small wood-framed portrait. While he cannot discern any detail from the doorway, he can guess the identity of the girl captured in the ancient photograph. Kopecz’s deep voice is hushed in recitation

 

_The Force shall free meThe Force shall free meThe Force shall free me_

 

and he continues along the ship’s duralloy catwalk, not daring to disturb him.

 

 

~

 

 

If Chaos truly exists to torture the souls of sinners in the afterlife, it might be close to this.

 

The cargo ramp of their shuttle lowers with a hissing of hydraulics and the sweltering heat hits them immediately, as though a flame projector has been turned on them all. The heat is so devastating, Kylo thinks he will shrivel up on the spot. A hot, howling simoom quickly clears the vapour, revealing a trio of hirsute equine-humanoid arthropoids awaiting them by the foot of the ramp. The front pair already have their blaster-barrels focused on the hatch; the third at the rear holds a comlink to his snout, the other hand poised on his own blaster. Electrobinoculars hang from their necks.

 

As if expecting all this, Kopecz stands ready with a feral gleam in his eyes.

 

Before any of them have the chance to speak – before Kylo can even draw his saber - with a swift curling gesture of his cybernetic hand, the Twi’lek immobilises all three.

 

Only their narrow feline eyes and disproportionately large, pointed ears track the Knight as he descends upon them, slowly, deliberately. His black cloak billows and whips about his wiry frame in the gale. He weaves languidly between the creatures, towering over them at nearly twice their height, scowling down as though they were vermin to be extinguished. Kylo and the four crew hang back, observing silently from the cargo ramp.

 

“These oversized pack-rats are the scourge of Bothawui,” Kopecz growls, his voice dripping with disdain. A flick of his fingers, and their blasters simultaneously drop to the sand at their feet, along with the comlink. “They bring shame upon their people.”

 

Kylo remembers his mother speaking of the Bothans with great reverence, her tales of their selfless sacrifice for the Rebel Alliance, to obtain intelligence on the second Death Star and Emperor Palpatine’s presence aboard it before the Battle of Endor. Without their benevolence, the Alliance would never have been able to destroy the battlestation or overthrow the Galactic Empire. They cohabited peacefully with Bothawui’s human immigrants.

 

Lying in the dust, the frozen perimeter guard’s comlink emits a stream of unintelligible squabble.

 

Kopecz’s portrayal of events was a stark contrast to Leia’s. Since the Bothan contingent withdrew from the New Republic Council and fled Hosnian Prime before its destruction, their race had become divided: those who maintained the ideologies of their original government, and a cabal of dissidents, who wreaked havoc in Drev’starn before retreating to smaller villages and campsites at the periphery of civilisation. Bothawui is perpetually a hair’s breadth away from civil war.

 

Its human immigrants, once a minority population and now pushed to the brink of extinction, were either slaughtered or enslaved by the insurgents, used as pack animals or bartering goods for Crimson Dawn’s sporadic supply runs. Genocide, he explained. _Ar’kr_ _ai,_ as Bothans call it.

 

Halfway down the cargo ramp, Mitaka and the other three crew unholster their own blaster rifles, aiming them uncertainly at their hostile welcoming party.

 

“Human chattel are their currency,” Kopecz snarls, halting abruptly behind the third in line and splaying his fingers behind its equus-like skull. “This vermin, for instance...” he inhales deeply and grimaces, as though sucking in some essence of its corrupted soul, “... _Yaqeel_ , his name is… exchanged two human children for a week’s supply of water purification powder just two days ago.” He rounds the creature and stands at its front, dwarfing it, menacingly close. “Sickly and emaciated, both of them. Not long for this world. He thought it was a good deal.”

 

He rotates his wrist in front of its face. With an sharp, stomach-turning _crack_ , its equine head rotates grotesquely on its unmoving body. Apathetic, Kopecz withdraws his clawed hand and the limp guard collapses into the sand with a dull _thud_ , dead. Its snapped spine tents the hairy brown skin at the nape of its neck.

 

The chatter from the fallen comlink intensifies.

 

The remaining two are trembling now, anchored in place with the Force. In a single stride, the Knight is in front of the second in line, raising his hand again to its fleecy temple. The creature cringes as its thoughts are pierced.

 

“This one strings them together by their throats, using prisoner restraint collars. His name was _Yantahar_.” At his use of past tense, the captive humanoid whimpers. “Easier to...” he draws a shuddering breath. “Easier to transport the dead that way, borne on the backs of the others.” Its terror is short-lived – Kopecz unceremoniously snaps its neck with the Force and advances on the single remaining Bothan.

 

The creature’s cimmerian eyes widen, knowing its fate, and it emits an urgent humming sound from its twitching snout. “ _Utric_ ,” the Twi’lek simmers, his lip curled in a sneer, pointed teeth gnashing. “You may speak, tyrant.”

 

“ _Sei,”_ it croaks, gravelly and toneless. _“Orok nay grai?”_

 

Something dark and malevolent flashes through Kopecz’s bloodshot eyes. “Who am I? Why, I am the angel of death, Utric,” he murmurs softly. A brisk rotation of his hand, and its spine splinters with a sickening _crunch_ that makes even the crew recoil. Kylo feels their spike of disquiet through the Force, but all four remain silent. The blasters rise from the desert sand and fly free, seemingly of their own accord, smashing into the plexisteel hull.

 

Kopecz turns his attention to the rattled crew. “Load the hoversleds,” he booms, yanking the hood of his cloak back over his head. Kluub’s three servants obediently retreat into the cargo hold, followed by a bewildered Mitaka. “Ben, come with me. There are games afoot. These Hutt-spawn were only sentinels.” He gestures toward the disfigured corpses, then points directly ahead. “There is only one guard camp; we must place ourselves between it and the slaves’ shelter with haste.”

 

Kylo frowns. This is no routine supply run. As their shuttle had descended through the atmosphere, he observed a sprawling settlement of at least one hundred polyskin tents west of the main village, and had counted six groups of perimeter scouts.

 

Evading them all will be impossible.

 

Hearing his thoughts, Kopecz leers at him and mouths a single word - _Ar’kr_ _ai -_ then pivots on his heel and strides headlong into the churning sand. His ugly, inky rage in the Force permeates the air, leaving a thick miasma in his wake.

 

Scanning the horizon for advancing raiders, Kylo winds layers of cloth about his face, secures protective goggles over his eyes and hastens to follow his Knight into the phantasmagorical badlands. The disguise allows greater freedom of movement than his usual inky finery, but still feels alien and uncomfortable – as if he were masquerading as one of the Sand People. Their four crew are similarly dressed, but the Knight remains in his trademark black cloak. _You must not be recognisable for your title_ , _Supreme Leader,_ _nor your affiliation,_ Kopecz had forewarned. _Today, we are nobody_.

 

The harsh sun beats down upon them, its one malevolent eye unblinking, not even a single wisp of cloud overhead to soften its unforgiving rays.

 

Within minutes, his gauzy clothing is uncomfortably hot and pasted to his skin. Salty sweat stings his eyes beneath the goggles. The air itself is thick and insufferably arid, every breath like drowning in Mustafarian lava. Visibility is appalling through clouds of swirling dust in the dry, cutting wind, but when he shields his eyes from the sun, he can scarcely discern Kopecz’s rangy figure trudging ahead. Beyond, the shadowy rectangles of buildings protrude from the sand.

 

Kylo senses the first blast seconds before it whizzes past them.

 

Another electronic pulse rings out in the distance. Laserfire. His right hand flits reflexively to his lightsaber, unclipping it. Behind him, the four crewmembers, flanking two hoversleds loaded with supply crates, each draw their blaster rifles once again. They slow their pace and trace the western horizon with their barrels, seeking an invisible enemy.

 

He stills, centres himself, and reaches out with the Force.

 

They’re outnumbered.

 

Overwhelmingly so. Has his Knight brought them all here to die?

 

He senses the Force-signatures of three hundred or more enraged Bothans charging them, all heavily armed, some seated astride harnessed krak’jyas and glitterclaws. Their shadowy outlines, wavering in the distant mirage, are rapidly advancing.

 

All at once, the onslaught erupts.

 

In an instant, a fusillade of blasterfire rents the air, screaming past like a swarm of raptor-wasps. The supply crates’ meleenium casings rain showers of sparks onto the hoversleds as they are struck. Without hesitation, the crew drop to their stomachs in the sand, discharging their own blasters back toward the horizon at an enemy unseen. Beyond them, Kopecz Ren marches ahead with singular focus, seemingly heedless of the onslaught and its threat to his underlings.

 

Kylo is left with no choice. If the Twi’lek condemns him and his amethyst lightsaber as Al-Jinn had – or worse, attacks him for it – then he shall join her in the pit of ashes beneath Vader’s helmet. Kylo cannot protect the slaves, nor their cargo; only himself.

 

It is like training with hundreds of Marksman-H remotes simultaneously, free from the confined space of a training gym, and every bolt potentially lethal. Infinitely more attackers. He feels the tremor of the dark Force beneath his skin, in his blood.

 

It’s exhilarating.

 

His purple blade blazes to life.

 

In one fluid motion, Kylo begins weaving it deftly about his waist in a figure-eight. With each revolution, it whips faster and faster until his body is sheathed in a fiery violet blur, deflecting the plasma bolts wailing at him from every angle back into the advancing shadows in the distance.

 

Mitaka yelps. He must have been struck. Glancing over his shoulder, Kylo sees his lieutenant batting frantically at his right calf, trying to smother the flames there by pounding his leg into the sand.

 

“Kopecz! There are too many of them!” he hollers, drowned out by the shrieking gale.

 

The Twi’lek spins around and catches his gaze.

 

“You expect me to annihilate an entire army?!” Kylo barks.

 

The Knight is hardly visible behind the vibrant wheel of Kylo’s saber and the roiling dust, golden eyes ablaze beneath his cowl. Kopecz has not drawn a weapon of his own. His silhouette begins to shake, and Kylo realises with a jolt that he is actually _laughing_ , bitter and humourless. He bellows something back, inaudible over the raging wind and battery of blasterfire, but deafening between Kylo’s ears.

 

_Break the Force, Ben. Make it your beast of burden._

 

Unflinching at the bolts screeching past his head, Kopecz nods deeply – almost a bow - then raises his flesh-and-blood arm to the insurgents, palm outward. His eyes never leave Kylo’s.

 

Without a single word, Kylo understands. He mirrors the gesture, the other hand clenched tight around the hilt of his saber, and _pushes._ The arid air encasing them quivers and warps, distorting their surrounds into bizarre shapes, like a stationary shock-wave.

 

Together, they freeze every plasma bolt mid-air, even as the fusillade continues relentlessly.

 

The Bothan guerrillas redouble their efforts. As the cannonade intensifies, their laserfire coalesces harmlessly into a brilliant, ice-blue wall of energy that hovers beside the six-man party, arrested in place with the Force. He feels the charge of each shot hanging there, suspended, humming. Kopecz is still grinning wickedly, his bloodlust oozing into the Force around him.

 

Then, with a synchronised flick of their wrists, the two send the bolts back the way they came.

 

The effect is like firing an ion cannon.

 

A great wall death soars back at the advancing enemy, obliterating all in its path. Kylo senses their adversaries’ sudden panic in the Force and feels, more than he hears, terror-stricken howling as their own blaster bolts chase after them. The first wave of attackers is vaporised instantly; the second, slammed into the sand, maimed or dead, leaving only those at the rear alive. Some scatter and flee, but about half of the survivors continue to charge.

 

“Finish them quickly, Ben!” Kopecz bays over the shrieking gale. “Rendezvous there!” His biomechanical hand points to a large, ramshackle wooden structure east of the village, then beckons the crew to follow and veers away.

 

Kylo wields his saber overhead - the Soresu stance - and awaits the second volley of blasterfire. He senses reinforcements for the fallen descending upon him and watches impassively as his Knight guides their entourage into the swirling sands, until they disappear.

 

He will take them all, alone. The Force imbues him with the richest sense of invincibility.

 

“No survivors!” the knight roars back through the haze. “End their pestilence! _Ar’krai_ to the fascist vermin!”

 

 

~

 

 

The universe recedes until all that remain are Kylo Ren and his victims, advancing as if possessed of a single mind.

 

One man against an army.

 

Everyone that shoots at him dies in the dust. A thunderstorm of shattered bodies, Bothans and their beasts of burden alike.

 

They die so quickly that he feels giddy, flooded through the Force with the anguish of their bodies, the agonising beat of their flesh. The smallest edge of hysteria brushes against his awareness. He feels the searing heat of their own deflected shots lancing through them, the burning meat of their lungs and acrid stench of singed fur as they are penetrated. Their suffering is a choice to which they all succumb, a fate which they have brought upon themselves.

 

He can sense the mounting dread of the younger ones, understanding with painful clarity that they will die right there in the sand by their own blasterfire, among the corpses of strangers.

 

His whirling lightsaber deflects almost every bolt and he dodges the others, twisting on his knees, over the long axis of his body, flipping and somersaulting through the air with superhuman celerity. They keep coming and he sends them back ruthlessly, invigorated by every kill. Unlike training with droids, these shots are fired without rhythm or precision; a challenge Kylo relishes.

 

The enemy is almost invisible through the wastelands’ wind-whipped sand, nothing but shadows in the dust. He will show them the same mercy they have bestowed upon their human slaves. Crackling strands of energy spark between his fingers.

 

But it is not retributive justice that spurs him on.

 

It’s the violence; the primal thrill of taking a life.

 

All of his grief, hatred and rage – channelled into unfathomable power. The dark side demands death and revivifies him as he singlehandedly executes every opponent. Before Seregar – his sanctification to the darkness – he has never known strength of this magnitude.

 

Felling them all with reflected blasterfire is not enough. His only regret is that he can not to kill them more intimately. He wants to crush their throats, feel their spines splinter within his grip, strip the muscles from their bones, split their bellies open on his blade. To feed on their terror and witness that transcendental moment when their eyes glaze over and their soul dissipates into the abyss.

 

When he senses only a remaining few, still driving forward audaciously amidst the carcasses of their comrades, he lets them come. Beyond the flat desert plain, where the distant dunes touch the sky, yellow sand barrels high into the air in a colossal cloud. It’s like the breath of the gods, come to punish mortals for their sins.

 

Extinguishing his saber, he returns it to his belt.

 

As the creatures gallop into view, Kylo reaches out to them with fingers splayed wide and clawlike, feels the dark Force whipping through his veins like liquid fire, and blasts a maelstrom of electricity from his fingertips.

 

Bolt after bolt knifes from his hands, tearing jagged arcs of lurid white through the dust devils. The sickly-sweet odour of ozone fills the air.

 

It splinters and crackles as it spears them through.

 

Screaming, everywhere. Rising smoke, licks of flame, canine creatures in shadow stiffening and collapsing into the sand, seizing and thrashing wildly. The aroma of charred meat, carrying on the wind. Those who survive the initial onslaught are alarmed; anticipating an army, seeing just one man.

 

He will not relent.

 

No survivors. No quarter. Lightning forks from his fingers again and again, the whites of his eyes and bared teeth flourescing like glowplates. Kylo roars at their fallen bodies, brutish and unstoppable, like a caged animal finally freed.

 

The power of the dark side is an illness of which he never wishes to be cured. It hums discordant in his bones, but he grits his teeth, bending the Force to his will. Breaking it.

 

Every last Bothan perishes in the dust.

 

 

~

 

 

The sudden cacophony of blasterfire outside the hovel can only mean one thing.

 

War.

 

The Bothan libertarian army has finally arrived. Their prayers have been answered.

 

Instinct tells the boy to rejoice – they will be freed, at long last – but he is too frightened, and almost too weak to move. In his peripheral vision, strangely-dressed foreigners are busily unloading boxes from four huge supply crates stacked on hovering pallets, aided by a gaggle of emaciated slaves – those few who still possess the strength to do so. He has seen three of them before _._ They bring fresh food and water that has sustained the slaves beyond whatever synthsteak scraps their Bothan masters could see fit to spare. They are angels from Ops’nyzh, the paradise that awaits them in the afterlife, papa has told him.

 

He clings tighter to his father’s neck and buries his face into his chest, swaddled in a moth-eaten blanket.

 

War is the unknown, and nothing is more terrifying than the unknown.

 

The child senses the approach of a fifth being, whose presence sends a chill through the stagnant air. He has laid eyes upon this enigmatic character before, too; a walking gloom, its features always indiscernible within the shadows of its cloak.

 

 _Kit,_ it speaks to their minds in a soothing rumble, _Jhor-Kai._

 

Something about its presence is phantasmal, almost demonic; a bipedal absence of light – not just blackness, but nothing at all. It makes no noise and gives off no odour. The stuff of nightmares. Its gargantuan shadow engulfs both him and his father.

 

_You must come with us. It is not safe for you here._

 

His father shifts, craning his neck up at the figure. It had wanted the same thing one solar cycle ago, two… for as long as the boy can remember. Mama, Oma - his whole family – abhorred it. But they are in Ops’nyzh now, with the Force.

 

_I cannot return for you after today. Don’t be afraid. Come with me._

 

“ _Sei arr_ ,” comes Kit’s reverential whisper, and the thing lunges at him, a dark shape latching onto his arm.

 

Jhor-Kai reluctantly releases his father’s robe as he begins to rise stiffly to his feet. The child turns and peers up into their saviour’s face.

 

Its bulbous, bloodshot yellow eyes are eerily incandescent, the irises rimmed and flecked through with red. Its bared teeth, glinting over rubbery, pale gums, are as jagged and sharp as daggers, the kind that would easily tear through skin, like a skar’kla’s. Two fleshy tails protrude from its skull, slithering about its neck. As he watches in horror, it extends a robotic hand out to him from beneath the sleeve of its cloak. Its opposite hand, curled around papa’s forearm now, sprouts gnarled, clawed blue fingers.

 

The boy staggers backward until he hits decaying wood, shuts his eyes tight, and screams.

 

 

~

 

 

The overpowering stench of mould and rotting meat hits Kylo the moment he enters the sandswept hovel, and his gut clenches.

 

The structure itself is so decrepit, cheap teej-wood panels splintered and rotting in some parts, termite-ridden and crumbling in others, that he can hardly believe it is still standing. He has seen similar constructions before used as fathier stables and industrialised cattle sheds, but never witnessed anything like the horrifying squalor before him now.

 

Its packed-dirt floor is strewn with dirty blankets and other soiled linens, moth-eaten foam mattresses and grimy, crusted swaths of fabric unrecognisable as desert wrappings or bandages. The squalid dwelling is littered with bodies, shrivelled and skeletal, some lying sprawled on the filthy bedding, many cowering in corners. If not for their sickly Force-signatures, he would be unable to distinguish the living from the dead. It is stiflingly hot. Sweat trickles down his back, pooling at the base of his spine, and drips from his goggles as he pulls them away. His tunic and trousers are sodden with perspiration, plastered to his skin.

 

To the right, his five crewmembers are methodically unpacking supply crates with the aid of a few scraggy humans clad in frayed robes, presumably slaves. He feels many sets of eyes following him as he starts toward them; haunted, needy eyes, much too large for their bony faces. The ground seems to be tilting. Things are going hazy at the edges. His boot tangles with a stained sheet and he stumbles.

 

One of the men distributing boxes among the others has an unsettlingly familiar appearance, despite his dishevelled state. His beak-like nose is too protuberant for his features and the matted shock of his hair is frizzy and jet-black. He catches Kylo staring and peers back with dull, cobalt-blue eyes. Everything is swimming. He blinks droplets of sweat from his vision. It’s inconceivable - he couldn’t possibly know this man.

 

Another step. One foot in front of the other. They are all watching him now. This _kriffing_ heat – the very air feels as if it’s frying his lungs. His breathing is too fast, too shallow. How can anything survive in this atmosphere? The saturated fabric of his Tusken raider-like disguise pulls against his joints as he shambles toward the hoversleds. Head swirling, he tries to focus on Mitaka and the crew, on Kopecz, whom he vaguely realises has a small unconscious figure slung across one shoulder. The world spins and falters.

 

“They are coming with us, my lord.” Kopecz’s basso voice sounds as though he is speaking underwater. The Twi’lek points to the blue-eyed slave and the child he is carrying. “All that remain of her bloodline.”

 

Kylo hears the words, not comprehending. Gravity seems to have trebled. At least. His vision narrows to a single point. Gods, that _smell,_ so viscous and putrid, he can almost taste it.

 

“Lord Ren?” He thinks it’s Mitaka.

 

Everything hurts. His temples are pounding and his muscles cramp and twitch painfully as if he had been in combat for days, not minutes. His face hits the ground. The packed dirt is stained with dried fluid – he doesn’t want to think what. This is a place of sickness and death. The putrefying odour of soiled blankets and decomposition up close brings gorge rising from his stomach and he dry retches, over and over. Murky shadows are approaching him now, their footfalls muffled.

 

Then, nothing.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Bothese translation:**  
>  _Orok nay grai?_ = Who are you?  
>  _Sei arr_ = Magician/wizard traveller
> 
> Next chapter will also be from Kylo's POV.


	20. Bc4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s done this before, but it’s different – _exquisite_ \- because it’s _her._ She’s kissing him, and the world falls away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 45 degrees Celsius = 113 degrees Fahrenheit.  
> For maximum enjoyment of this chapter, check out [Wookieepedia's image of an Ortolan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ortolan) before reading.

 

 

“Oh, Ben! There's so much water! It's so _loud!”_

 

The waterfall is a breathtaking force of nature, both beautiful and brutal. Tranquil from a distance, deafening up close. They can barely hear each other shouting over its thunderous roar, vibrating the slippery stone beneath their feet. At its apex, it swishes over volcanic rock, then spirals into a plummeting transparent funnel that crashes into the serenity pool below, throwing up bubbles of spray. The cascade is sieved with silver at its fringes, lending it a hallucinatory quality.

 

He takes a step into the ethereal white mist, feeling crisp droplets bead on his cheeks, burbling water over jagged rocks at his feet. Everything is lush and viridescent, dappled vines snaking up the cliffside, silvered branches and towering evergreens. She smiles and beckons to him from the mirror-smooth divinity pool, chatoyant hazel eyes shining, offering her outstretched hand. The curve of her bare shoulders is just visible above the waterline.

 

“Ben?” A female voice.

 

His back hurts. His shoulders, chest.

 

Everything.

 

The ambient temperature seems to soar, even as some small part of his mind clings determinedly to nebulous images of the waterfall, the verdant forest, and of _her_.

 

Someone is kneeling over him, gently cradling his head in the crook of their elbow, pressing something soft and cool to his face. It feels divine against his burning, sweat-slicked skin.

 

He groans and tries to stretch his tingling limbs, disoriented by their strange heaviness, as though they were no longer attached to his body. Something curved and solid is pushed to his lips. A canteen. Recognising the object, he opens his mouth and drinks greedily. The water is lukewarm and tastes subtly of purification powder, but is bliss to his parched throat.

 

“He’s awake, sir,” she says.

 

Kylo opens his eyes to the pale oval of an undefined face framed by brunette locks. Her features are blurred around the edges. He can sense her concern in the Force, and something else – she’s entirely unafraid of him. It’s oddly refreshing.

 

“Who are you?” he croaks. The rumbling of water cascading down basalt rock and foaming into lather at is base still hums behind his eardrums, or perhaps it's his own pulse. He pushes himself up onto his elbows, faltering when the hazy outlines in his field of vision begin to spin.

 

“Easy now, Ben,” she soothes, raising the canteen to his mouth again. “Gentle sips.”

 

He swallows again, letting her take the weight of his shoulders as he rests back into her arm. “Who are you?” He’s slurring his words, as if blind drunk.

 

“I am Overliege Sinya’s slave,” the woman answers simply. “And your humble servant.”

 

“Can he walk?” booms a low-pitched voice from far away.

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Load him onto a repulsorsled immediately. We must depart without delay, before the village is engulfed.”

 

He feels many pairs of hands curling around him, over his thighs, around his ankles, beneath his shoulders.

 

“Where am I?” he rasps.

 

“Mesa Outpost. Bothawui.” The same motherly voice, now from his right leg, takes on a more authoritarian tone. “One! Two! _Three!_ " He is carefully lifted; several of them grunt under his weight. They are moving him now. His surroundings slowly begin to take shape: a rotting teej-wood ceiling, four Tusken raiders flanking him, clad in gauzy beige, and an animated skeleton in grey robes, flowing and frayed.

 

“You destroyed a horde of Bothan guerrillas, alone.” Kopecz’s features appear upside down above his head with the cowl of his cloak raised, yellow eyes scanning him. “In forty five degree heat. We have safe passage back to the shuttle for now, my lord, but there will be reinforcements after the sandstorm passes. _Alask bril_ _tarkona_ \- the breath of R’iia – is fast approaching. We must leave.”

 

Kylo’s body is lowered onto solid, angular planes, settling uncomfortably between the panels of adjacent octahedral supply crates. The woman sponges his forehead and cheeks once more, then smoothly raises his neck and shoulders aloft while another weaves desert wrappings back around his head. The bandages are cold and dripping this time, soaked with fresh water. Her canteen is pressed into his hand.

 

“Can you hold it, Ben?” she asks.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good. Keep drinking. _Slowly._ Don’t try to get up. We’ll be back on the Chimera soon enough, and we can cool you down properly.”

 

“What’s wrong with me?” The whooping desert gale crescendos as he feels the motion of the hoversled smoothly accelerating forward. Granular crepitations of windswept sand rattle the walls of the hovel. He senses six figures trudging alongside the platforms and a seventh, possibly sleeping, its Force signature ill-defined and dampened. They’re all human except for his Sith brother, he realises vaguely, struggling to comprehend anything beyond the sickening throbbing in his skull.

 

“Heatstroke would be my guess,” the woman replies. “Don’t worry; easily fixed. You’ll be back to your old self in a few hours.”

 

“ _Heatstroke._ Such a mortal affliction,” Kopecz carps under his breath, casting him a disparaging look. “Puny human.”

 

Kylo remembers this kind of verbal jousting only too well, from when they were teenagers. “Go sharpen your gnashers,” he japes back weakly. “Scrawny Ortolan.”

 

The Twi’lek’s laughter is like thunder, a low, rumbling boom.

 

 

~

 

 

A vast, rolling wave of dust is rapidly swallowing up the desert plain as their party emerges from the building. Grunting from the effort, the servants trudge back toward their shuttle as if they were wading through treacle, legs heaving against the gale. The sheer strength of the crosswind pummels their skin, hot and granular with the loose sand it sweeps up in its path, fiercely trying to shove them off-course. Kylo’s head lolls toward the horizon. All evidence of his massacre is buried now beneath a sheet of featureless yellow-brown, his victims all enshrouded where they fell.

 

“What about the others?” he slurs, wondering how any structure as decrepit as that squalid den could withstand the sandstorm.

 

His words go unheard in the howling wind, and in his mental stupor, are forgotten as soon as they are spoken.

 

 

~

 

 

He’s obtunded for almost a full day.

 

Time passes in bursts, fading in and out of consciousness, punctuated by Sinya’s shrewd-faced servant feeding him sips of electrolyte solution, sponging his skin and fanning him with a hovering ball droid. The woman appears in suspiciously perfect health and well-nourished, her livery immaculate, for a `slave.’ Most of her bright chatter melds together nonsensically as she works, something about their two passengers being refed and groomed for presentation to their new master on Ukio.

 

He supposes he could heal himself with the Force, but on some level, he understands that - in part - the Force has done this to him. Besides, Force Cure is incontrovertibly a lightsider ability.

 

On the second day, woozy and unsteady on his feet but unwilling to spend another minute languishing in the tiny medi-centre, the Supreme Leader secludes himself in the cockpit beside Mitaka, scrolling through a datapad. The pilot knows well enough to stay silent.

 

Before Mesa, he would never have imagined that things could be this dire. Bothawui is barely scratching the surface.

 

Hundreds of worlds have been ravaged by the intergalactic war then shunned by the First Order for their leaders’ refusal to submit. Overrun by anarchists, the dominion of criminal syndicates on whom its inhabitants rely for their survival, facing population upheaval to the point of extinction. The First Order strips everything from planets it _has_ conquered – land, resources, the entire populace as slaves and their children as ‘troopers, slaughtering those who disobey and giving back only sufficient supplies to sustain their slave labour.

 

It might have made sense once, when the First Order was clawing for dominance over the New Republic, risen from the ashes of the Empire. But now, having conquered the better part of the known galaxy, expanding the Order’s already fathomless reach seems pointless. Why expend all of their efforts building warships and weaponry, when their army is already unstoppable? It is nothing but a megalomaniac’s legacy – Snoke’s, and then Hux’s.

 

Repairing the damage done may take a lifetime - probably several - but the status quo is untenable. Absolute power is meaningless without a vision to better his dominion. Kylo cannot turn a blind eye while billions needlessly suffer. He had been unforgivably ignorant when he took up the mantle of galactic ruler, a full solar cycle broken and wasted, engaged with what now seem like selfish pursuits.

 

Maybe it was a only self-serving quest of Kopecz’s – to rescue those he treasured and relegate the rest to extinction, with a token gesture of a week’s supply of food and water.

 

Or maybe this was exactly what his Knight wanted him to see. To incite him to take action. If Kylo does nothing, every remaining human in that hovel will die along with a billion others just like them, on Bothawui and all across the galaxy.

 

If he wants to fix his dominion, he will indeed be alone in this.

 

Rey’s interminable allegiance to the Resistance will forever preclude her ruling the First Order at his side. He cannot force her hand. She calls him Ben, but there is no Ben. Ben Solo was Kylo Ren’s first kill, weak and foolish, like his father. Someone he once was; someone he will never be again.

 

His thoughts drift to that night just weeks before when he cradled her close, and for a fleeting moment, he thinks he would renounce his title in a heartbeat just to have it once more.

 

Rising from the co-pilot’s seat, Kylo stretches his back muscles, wincing. The tumbling blue-white aurora through the viewport shudders and spins a little as he stands. His bones still ache. A purple-black bruise is blooming across his right cheek, where he had collapsed. His torso is pockmarked with burns from sprites of his own lightning lashing his body. The small muscles between his knuckles cramp and fasciculate, held rigid for so long, and a tendril of hair had come away in his hand as he scrubbed sweat-caked dust from his scalp in the ‘fresher.

 

 

~

 

 

By the final day, the pounding headache has abated and the muscle soreness is almost gone, so long as he keeps moving. Kylo roams the shuttle in restless laps.

 

His Knight’s chamber is the furthest from the cockpit. On his fourth or fifth time passing it – he’s lost count – the pneumatic door slides open and he sneaks a glance inside, expecting to see Kopecz fervently engrossed in prayer, kneeling before his holocron.

 

For once, he is not. Instead, he slouches on his cot facing the far wall, black cloak and gambeson meticulously folded beside him on the mattress alongside his cybernetic right arm, its synthleather harness still attached. As Kylo watches silently, he peels away the sock from the stump below his shoulder and gingerly kneads the flesh there with long, spindly fingers.

 

Kylo has seen many an amputee since seeking apprenticeship under Master Snoke – many of whom he or his Knights delimbed themselves, maiming at Snoke’s bidding – but it unnerves him to witness his former confidante in such a state for the first time. Kopecz is at least two and a half metres tall; that incommodious cot could not possibly be comfortable, he thinks. He averts his gaze, keenly aware of his intrusion on an intensely private moment.

 

“It isn’t.” The Knight’s low baritone resonates through the passageway as Kylo turns to leave.

 

He hesitates, guilt washing over him.

 

“Comfortable,” Kopecz adds. Kylo hazards another peek. Wearing only a tabard and breeches with his overlarge, clawed feet bare on the deck grating, Kopecz resembles his padawan brother from the Jedi praxeum much more closely now than the monastic Knight of Ren to whom he has become accustomed.

 

A flash of memory – grief-stricken wailing distorting into agonised screams, a saberstaff hurtling across the throne room with its offending limb still attached – and his heart clenches painfully. “I’ll leave you be.”

 

“No. I shall speak with you, my lord,” the Twi’lek replies evenly, continuing to offer his back. "You did well."

 

"Had you been honest, _nerra,_ I still would have come."

 

"Had I been honest, you would have deployed your underlings in our place. I wanted you to see for yourself. Execute three hundred, terrify three million. My last supply run may have drawn too much unwanted attention.” His fingers trace the cobbled scarring of his stub.

 

“ _May_ have? You _knew_. You wanted war.”

 

The Knight swivels to face him, his gaze heavy, assessing, speculative. “Yes, I knew. And I knew you would rise to the challenge. It is always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, sire. We are not living in an age of giants, but to succeed, we must become as beasts.”

 

An uneasy silence hangs between them for several beats as Kylo weighs the response – his erstwhile brother’s immense faith in him, and that he’d allowed himself to be misled. Used, perhaps, as a weapon. Chastising the knight for it, however - in such a vulnerable state - would be uncouth. He bites his tongue.

 

“It takes its toll,” Kopecz adds softly.

 

Kylo’s frown deepens.

 

“The dark side of the Force, Ben. It has anointed you. Your feet are set upon a path into a trackless wilderness, from which few return.”

 

He bristles. “That isn’t my name. Ben is dead.”

 

“Yes. But then, so is Byt.”

 

“Are you sure? Our _quinjon_ might say otherwise.”

 

“What we think, we become,” the Twi’lek professes stonily. “It was hardly an act of altruism. They were her kin, so, they are mine.” He massages his deltoid, jaw tightening as he squeezes the tender flesh. “Our _quinjon_ fear the unknown.”

 

“Does it hurt?” Kylo asks, scarcely above a whisper.

 

The tips of Kopecz’s lekku coil together. _Always, nerra._ Kylo doesn’t know if he still means the stump of his arm.

 

“Is Mesa Outpost where you would go? When you left Fralideja every cycle?”

 

The Twi’lek nods. “To see my...” His voice cracks and he averts his gaze for a moment, swallowing hard. “Delivering supplies to the slaves. Kind donations from _numa_ Sinya and her subjects. Eliminating slave-drivers from Crimson Dawn and other syndicates, when such opportunities presented themselves; distributing their wares among their intended chattel instead.” He shoots Kylo a humourless grin. “And slaying the occasional Bothan, when their hubris outweighed their good sense. Our last few runs… one hundred thousand credits buys a great deal of sustenance, sire. Thank you. But with each visit, their living conditions had diminished… and their numbers. She had a large family. Seven siblings.”

 

The universe suddenly feels unbearably heavy on Kylo’s shoulders. Had he accepted responsibility sooner… or channelled the darkness differently… or just left Kira alone to translate her own kriffing Sacred Text, how different things might have been. “I’m sorry, _nerra_.”

 

“Our decisions are not so much our own as you may believe. We were but instruments of the cosmic Force, back then. In the fullness of time, it shall have its way. _Wasnawa uba, wasnawa jay_.”

 

Kylo can only gaze mutely at what has become of his brother; a piteous, melancholy existence for a choice Ben Solo made eight solar cycles ago. “ _Nobra edgra_ ,” he whispers.

 

“I should have taken them sooner,” the Twi’lek mutters, staring at the deck. “They refused to come.” He draws a circle through the air around his face with one barbed finger by way of explanation.

 

Perhaps he can coax him out of isolation for the last of their journey together. “Don’t you want to spend time with your... kin?”

 

Kopecz shakes his head, his lekku writhing uneasily. “No. They are afraid of me. Sinya will take care of them.”

 

There’s a long, pregnant pause.

 

Then, “Who is Rey, my lord?”

 

Kylo fixes him with a cautioning glare and fortifies his mental barricade, shutting him out. “No one.”

 

“No one and nothing,” the Knight repeats, quirking a smile. “You called to her as you regained consciousness in the hovel.” He rises and reaches the doorway in several short strides, his inordinately tall frame looming over Kylo. Kopecz's face is reminiscent of the padawan that Ben once knew, but gaunt and withered now, deep furrows etched into his cerulean features. Hardship and misery have aged him beyond his years. Without the cloak, the appearance up close of the fleshy stub protruding from his tabard is jarring.

 

He rests his hand gently on Kylo’s arm. “Your soulmate is not someone who enters your life peacefully,” he counsels, a note of etiolated nostalgia colouring his voice. “It is one who comes to make you question things, who changes your reality. Somebody who marks a before and after in your life. Not the deity everyone idealises, but an ordinary person, who revolutionises your world in a second.”

 

Kylo twists free of his grasp. “I should leave,” he murmurs uncomfortably. With a deferential nod, he spins on his heel and strides away.

 

“If your destiny lies with her, sire,” Kopecz calls after him, “seize the moment.”

 

 

~

 

 

The Supreme Leader’s first act upon reaching his flagship is to redeploy three Resurgent-class Star Destroyers from the Core Worlds to the Mid Rim, each loaded with a full complement of TIE fighters and carrying fifty thousand Stormtroopers.

 

Within twenty-four standard hours, an Imperial Blockade is established in the outer atmosphere of Bothawui.

 

Within forty-eight standard hours, sixteen shuttles identified as Crimson Dawn’s have been blasted to space dust. Those few pilots with the gall to return fire on any First Order TIE fighters meet a fiery end at the point of a turbolaser cannon.

 

Captain Yago reports that First Light are sending one holographic transmission after another; Margo, the public face of Crimson Dawn, and her two Decraniated handservants, demanding to know why their treaty with the Order has not been upheld. Kylo orders him to trace the signal and have their leader’s yacht and any support vessels obliterated immediately.

 

The volatility between Bothan and human gnaws at the back of his mind. Curtailing organised crime will treble the the crisis. They will need an alternative source of supplies, and military intervention, ground forces to bolster the libertarian army. An era of warfare is inevitable to purge the galaxy of those who have allowed it to decay. Bothawui is but one of several hundred planets whose inhabitants will be in the same – or worse – predicament.

 

There are dark times ahead.

 

 

~

 

 

The second night Rey comes to him, the Supreme Leader is outlining the beginnings of a plan to the captain of the First Order’s naval forces and the head of its security bureau.

 

They debate rerouting resources, trade and supply lines within The Slice. Reinstating the Manda Merchant Route would entail only a minor deviation and encompass the entire Mid Rim, but without military occupation en masse, the civil unrest on its four currently unsupplied planets is certain to escalate, whether there is involvement by criminal cartels or not. An offensive strike is imperative. The Bothan fascists could be easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of ‘troopers aboard the Star Destroyers comprising the planet’s current imperial blockade; a mere token, compared with the full potential of the First Order.

 

Any number of crime syndicates will interpret the blockade as a declaration of war. Rerouting supply runs will undermine their business dealings, further provoking hostility. The far-reaching consequences of Kylo’s actions are as yet unknown, but he has thirty Star Destroyers and an army of twenty million at his disposal.

 

Enough to quash any adversary, so long as he chooses wisely.

 

And then there is the matter of Hux. That smarmy sithspit is still out there, a liability that makes him uncomfortable.

 

He senses a sudden jitter in the Force, the prelude to a familiar connection. The officers’ heated discussion and the background hum of the battlecruiser’s engines become dull and muted; the hairs prickling at the nape of his neck can mean only one thing. A mystical distortion in the fabric of the universe. His heartbeat quickens.

 

He had almost forgotten how beautiful she is.

 

She has a kind of understated beauty, perhaps because she is so disarmingly unaware of it. Her large, bottomless hazel eyes hold such intelligence and serenity that it is difficult not to be held prisoner by them. She wears her hair in a half-ponytail, fluid and longer than he remembers, lying gently over her collarbones. Cradling another book to her chest, her eyes flicker nervously between the veteran officers and the illuminated holotank, wide and apprehensive. Her power in the Force rolls off her in luminescent waves; just her presence lights up the dimmed command centre. The sight of her feels like coming home.

 

Kylo turns and silently places a gloved hand on the small of her back, demands to Commander Weel and Captain Opan that his orders be enacted post haste, and declares their conference adjourned for the night. The officers don’t react – he doubts that their feeble, Force-insensitive minds register the aberration.

 

Steering her through the passageways of the Finalizer, he slows his stride a little to allow her ease of step. Escorting Rey to his quarters like this is unnecessary; if he stormed ahead alone, she would reappear behind him anyway, but he cannot help but touch her. Seven days without her has been too long.

 

“I missed you,” she confesses quietly as they march.

 

Kylo doesn’t reply. His eyes travel the length of her body; this lesson will certainly test his self-control. He is unsure whether the dusting of crimson on her cheeks is really there or if it is just his imagination.

 

If she won’t rule alongside him, then at least he will have this.

 

 

~

 

 

Tonight, she has chosen the most grandiloquent of the Sacred Texts for their tutorial - the Rammahgon. He wonders how differently his own life would have played out if the damned thing had never been written.

 

“It is the most difficult to read,” he warns, doffing his gloves. “There are a dozen others we haven’t covered, if I remember correctly.”

 

Rey shakes her head dismissively. “Leia wanted to leave it ‘til last… but I can do it.”

 

She sinks down alongside his sleeper with her back to the mattress, expectantly patting the floor next to her. Resting the huge volume in her lap, she opens it to the first page; the parchment smells musty and decaying, even from across the cosmos.

 

A loose sheet slips out from beneath the cover and Kylo reaches for it instinctively. It’s one of Master Odan-Urr’s scrolls – Ben had hidden it away before Byt could tear it to shreds. His fingers pass straight through the vellum and for a brief moment, he stares in disbelief at his empty hand.

 

“What’s this?” she asks, snatching it up.

 

He moves to swipe it away from her hand, but she holds it out across her body at arm’s length, just beyond his reach.

 

“It’s nothing. Put it away.”

 

She pauses for a second, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. He could tackle her for it, he supposes, knock her warm body flat on the floor beside his sleeper, pin her down and wrench it from her grasp. While she squirms underneath him. But then... he knows where he'd want that to lead, to things not befitting of a teacher.

 

To his surprise, Rey obeys without argument, sliding it delicately beneath the back cover. He doesn’t need to invade her thoughts to know straight away that this will be the first thing she examines after their Force interlude ends.

 

As he’d anticipated, even for her, the Rammahgon proves a genuine trial. Kylo recalls all twelve of his padawan brothers on Tython struggling with the antiquated language, disputing its relevance to their training. He watches her carefully as she labours over the ancient script, determinedly pronouncing every syllable through gritted teeth. It is almost absurd to watch, her face a study in resentful frustration, attacking the tedious phraseology about attaining serenity and spiritual enlightenment as though it were an adversary, a hurdle to be overcome. She has never been one to shy away from a challenge.

 

“The Chal… Chal… Chal-act-an Enlightenment was the highest spiritual attainment of the Chal-act-an Ad-epts,” she narrates. “Those who achieved it wore the Greater...”

 

“Touch it, Rey,” he interrupts softly. “Keep your hands on it, and I can read it to you.”

 

“ _I-can-do-it,_ ” she grouses, her face scrunching up indignantly. “Greater Mark of Ill-u-min-a-tion. _There_.” She huffs and turns the page so violently, he is surprised she doesn’t rip it out of the book. “The Enlightenment was sym-bol-ised by the… the… Un-close-ab-le Eye… granted by the Con-vo-ca-tion of Ad-epts.”

 

The second time he interjects, sensing her growing discouragement, she nearly throws the book at him.

 

He patiently lets her grapple through for several more chapters, staring down at the Text with open disdain, before frustration finally gets the better of her. Unclenching her fists, she slams the ancient tome shut and lets it drop to the deck beside her, hanging her head. It disappears as she releases it.

 

“Could you… just… explain it to me in plain Basic?” she implores despondently, staring at the floor. “Simple language that an uneducated scavenger like me could understand?”

 

Kylo places a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Don’t say that. The Chalactan Adepts have no bearing on our connection to the Force, now, _today_. Dried bones, tired old legends. This Text is flowery doublespeak for the sake of it, written by some pretentious old Grand Master a thousand generations ago. Redundant history and empty platitudes.”

 

“Did Ma – did Luke tell you that?”

 

“...No.” The ghost of a smile plays at his mouth.

 

She wilts, shoulders slumping, and looks up at him pleadingly. “But… but… it’s so important that I get through these.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because...” Her lustrous eyes shimmer, chin quivering. “Because these kriffing _books_ -” she waves a hand vaguely at the empty deck, where she dropped the Rammahgon “- are all I have, to understand this thing inside… this power… that’s growing. I’m afraid of it. It’s light… and dark. I can’t control it properly, not the way you can. These are the lessons I never had.”

 

He imagines what it must have been like, raising herself in the unforgiving Jakku desert, with such raw strength in the Force simmering inside but never having a guiding hand to channel it. His own parents were terrified of him when they cast him off to the temple and Uncle Luke, Ben’s violent outbursts, the objects that flew and smashed of their own accord when he was enraged or frightened.

 

Rey needed a teacher. She would have made a gifted pupil, but for some reason that defies logic, arrogance perhaps, Skywalker refused to mentor her. He was an imbecile. Karking Skywalker, with his pithy aphorisms and holier-than-thou attitude. Kylo would gladly, eagerly tutor her in the ways of the Jedi, the Sith, the Force… in all things.

 

He slides his hand across her shoulders, pulling her to him in a loose hug. “Rey... Firstly, you are not `uneducated’. You taught yourself to read. That in itself is extraordinary. There is nothing, _nothing,_ that is beyond you.” He will not have her berate herself. Untrained, she had overpowered him twice – casting aside his innately honed mental barriers and vocalising his greatest fear in the interrogation cell, then besting him in combat, having never before held a lightsaber.

 

She looks away, embarrassed at the complement, but leans into him a little.

 

“And secondly, this volume contains nothing that you don’t already possess. It is deliberately over-written, probably to force a potential Jedi apprentice to analyse it with their master.” He gently squeezes her shoulder. She’d had the audacity to seek him out again, too, after the oafish moron he’d made of himself by her waterfall. “Rey, the books aren’t all you have.”

 

“A stolen lightsaber from a madman,” she gripes. “And a broken one.” There is more that she isn’t telling him, but he doesn’t pry further.

 

“No. You have me.”

 

Her eyes search his face again, holding a silent plea.

 

“For as long as this… this Force bond holds out, you have me.”

 

“...You would still teach me? After… everything?” she asks with a hopeful smile.

 

Kylo returns her grin. “I will.”

 

She relaxes, letting him hold her, deep in thought. A soft rustle of breeze stirs his hair, his cloak – presumably from her side of the connection, and he can almost hear the faint burbling of running water, dried leaves rustling across peaty soil, birds trilling amongst the evergreens. Her light is calling out to him, like it always has, and right now he wants nothing more than to bask in it for as long as she allows.

 

“So… what’s a Greater Mark of Illumination?” she asks.

 

“It was a symbol of the Chalactan Adepts. They were a mystic order of the Chalactan race in the era of the Galactic Republic,” he tells her. “They strove for oneness with the living Force, believing that the natural laws governing the universe also governed the lives of its inhabitants.”

 

“Like Jedi.”

 

“Yes, like Jedi, but they were passivists.”

 

The First Order army had slaughtered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Force-sensitives on Chalacta during Snoke’s dominion: descendants from the Adepts and the families of Jedi. Second only to Skywalker’s training temple on Tython, they had presented the greatest threat of a resurgence of the Jedi Order.

 

“The Greater Mark signified they had achieved spiritual enlightenment.” He cups Rey’s chin, turning her face toward his, just inches away. “It was a gold bead affixed to the frontal bone, just here -” he touches a finger lightly to the centre of her forehead - “and the Lesser Mark, here.” He taps the bridge of her nose.

 

A stray tendril of hair escapes her ponytail in the breeze and tumbles across her face. Before he knows what he is doing, Kylo smooths it back, tucking it behind her ear. His fingers linger at the angle of her jaw; her skin is unexpectedly soft.

 

Rey’s eyes flutter closed and she turns her cheek into his palm, her own small hand coming up to cover his. Guiding it to her lips, she kisses the centre of his palm softly – just a faint brush, but enough to make his breath hitch. For a moment, he feels more vulnerable than he has ever felt before. Part of him wants to run and hide, cleave their psionic thread and retreat back into the darkness that has held him for so long.

 

 _Don’t,_ she thinks. _Stay here with me._

 

What a catastrophe her bumbling attempts had been, when she tried to give him the dice… but what he wouldn’t give to have that moment again.

 

He strokes her freckled cheek softly with his thumb, wondering if he has the nerve to transgress this strange relationship they have forged.

 

 _Frack_ it. She can only disappear again. And he can keep her here, if he chooses.

 

Threading his fingers through the roots of her chestnut hair, he slowly clenches into a fist, anchoring her firmly in place. He bends down, his lips against her cheekbone, lightly grazing it – but still that light touch sends shivers through his spine.

 

“If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he whispers. When she says nothing, he brushes his mouth against the hollow of her temple, the shell of her ear. “Or now.” He traces the line of her jaw. “Or now.” His lips find hers.

 

“I want -” The rest of her words are lost against his mouth.

 

He kisses her slowly, carefully, capturing her lower lip between his. At first, she freezes – he hears her gasp – then she tries in earnest to kiss him back.

 

He will not allow it. He wants to school her in this, too.

 

Turning his attention to her cupid’s bow, he kisses her chastely and withdraws, over and over, enjoying the little tugs against his fingers fisted in her hair as she tries in vain to respond. He’s not quite there yet; he’s flirting with the moment.

 

Teasing Rey like this a thrill. Pressing their foreheads together, he delights in the warm chuffs of her breath mingling with his. Her breathing has quickened. She’s trembling already.

 

For all the exotic lovers he’s touched and held and fucked senseless, this might be the most erotic moment of his life.

 

“Ben,” she breathes, _more,_ and all he can see this close is that sensual, lascivious mouth. Leaning into her again, he pulls her full lower lip into his mouth and sucks it, scraping his teeth across it, feeling her jolt beneath his hand at the sensation. He feels her cool hand touch his cheek, fingertips tracing the length of the scar she branded him with, from his brow down to the high collar of his tunic. _Her_ scar. The tingle of her calloused fingers rubbing the ridges of his scar is a disarming pleasure.

 

He rewards her with slow, open-mouthed kisses, warm and wet. Feasting on her delectable mouth. She tastes like sweetness and inexperience, but she is taking lead from his movements, learning fast.

 

It’s making him giddy, the softness of her lips, her eagerness to explore. Rey slowly threads her other hand into his hair, fingernails gliding across his scalp. _Maker,_ it feels good. His whole body thrums with heat – he never knew he needed this until now.

 

“Give me your tongue,” he murmurs against her mouth, his deep voice raw with a small tremor at the end of the final word. To demonstrate, he touches his tongue to the seam of her lips. The sensation steals another tiny gasp from her lungs that sends pleasure spiralling right down his centre. Harder this time, he traces her lower lip. Her enthusiasm and nervousness mingle like a rich cocktail in the Force.

 

And then she’s there, flicking her searching tongue between his parted lips, running it alongside his, dipping into his mouth. She’s soft and wet and he pulls her closer, losing himself completely in the moment. Something quivers in the very seat of him, skittering along every nerve. He’s done this before, but it’s different – _exquisite_ \- because it’s _her._ She’s kissing him, and the world falls away.

 

Kylo pulls back with a jagged breath. Untwining his fingers from the fall of her hair, his thumb finds her mouth and drags against her lower lip. The thought of those plush, glistening lips on his skin… wrapped around him… floods him with heat.

 

“Was it… was it… a good kiss?” she asks shakily.

 

He frowns. It has been years since… anything. What constitutes a good kiss, he doesn’t know. This one had him forgetting himself, his mind short-circuited, heart drumming in his ears. Wanting more. Craving more.

 

“You’ve never been kissed before?” he manages in a rough voice.

 

Rey suddenly can’t meet his gaze. “No.”

 

 _Yes,_ her thoughts read, but like him, an experience she would just as soon forget.

 

Cupping her face, he tilts it back up to his. Her pupils are dilated. “You tell me, then,” he replies sotto voce.

 

“I don’t know.” There is a glint of mischief in her eyes that is a joy to see. “I’ll need... more practice.” Her hands glide to his waist and across his tunic, tracing the hard contours of his back beneath the cloak, interlacing behind his neck.

 

Kylo cannot hide his amusement. “More practice,” he echoes softly, grinning like a fool. Wrapping his arms around her, he drags her across his lap and pulls her tight against him. He loves it. He loves the way her small body melts into his, how she relents when he winds his fingers back into the silken tresses of her hair. His lips brush hers again and she opens to him, caressing him gently, their tongues shyly stroking and tasting.

 

Delving into her thoughts now seems wrong, but he can’t help himself. This is wondrous and new to her – her first real kiss. In all her numbing years of day-in, day-out scrounging for scrap among the ruins of long-dead battles, trading and pleading for portions to survive, she has never found the time for her first kiss. She has yielded to him, given him this singular gift. He feels tremendously pleased for it.

 

Within an hour, he has begun to learn exactly what she likes, and he’s as hard as he’s ever been.

 

He could just barge into her mind and see for himself, but this lazy, unhurried experimentation is so much more thrilling, feeling her react to the things he does to her.

 

For instance, when he curls his tongue against hers, she makes a small, needy sound low in her throat that makes his cock twitch.

 

If he bites her – her lower lip, her earlobe, the curve of her neck, anywhere – she clenches her arms tighter around his back and cants her hips into him. The more savage the bite, the better, it seems. She’s incredibly strong, as he’d known she would be.

 

She prefers the sensation of his bare skin to leather. He may never wear his gloves again, he muses.

 

And – if he digs his fingers into the dimples at the base of her spine and massages in small circles, with just the right pressure – she will groan with pleasure and almost go limp in his arms.

 

The warm slide of her tongue exploring his mouth is a heady rush, but not enough. _Oh,_ she’s learning fast. He wants more. So much more. He’s aroused beyond belief now, hard and aching inside his fitted leather breeches – and she is chaste. Pure. She’s never had the ecstasy of a lover scratching passion into her skin. No experience of sex; no shame, no inhibitions, no taboos.

 

She would be perfect – perfect for him.

 

He wants to strip her bare, right here, and worship her properly for hours. He wants to suck bruises into her sun-drenched skin, to mark her and claim her as his own. And he wants to fuck her until she begs for mercy.

 

The idea of being where no one else has been before is hypnotic.

 

Breaking away, he squeezes her bottom roughly and rubs his nose against the soft spot beneath her ear, breathing her phenomenal scent, desert sunshine embedded in golden skin. She clutches him tighter, quivering. Emboldened by her response, he mouths a slow trail of kisses up the sensitive column of her throat, her jaw, feeling her strong pulse against his lips.

 

“Am I dreaming?” he purrs against her neck. He knows this dream well… how it starts… it occupies his every waking thought. Yet this feels so real. Gods, he needs her here. Really, physically _here._ Rey’s lithe, warm body is melting into his, her fingers raking tantalisingly through his hair. He hopes she can feel his telltale hardness against her belly through his breeches, every fracking inch of it.

 

“Ben,” she whispers, “...more.” Her lips are darkened and wet. The tousled mess he’s made of her hair frames her face, and he thinks she’s more resplendent like this than he’s ever seen her before. Whatever inviolable, iron-clad wall they have erected between them as enemies shatters, leaving just a man and a woman.

 

He will never deny her and she’s there again, that sensual, irresistible mouth, licking and nibbling and teasing his lips. Rey tugs harder at his hair and it’s _euphoric_ and he lets out a wanton moan, his imagination running wild.

 

Their minds are brushing together, and his tongue is in her mouth, and his hands are learning every curve of her body, soft and pliant. She’s never been touched like this before. He wants to touch her everywhere, to make her fall to pieces and scream his name. _Stars_ , he thinks he could come just from the wild exhilaration of sensing her in his thoughts, experiencing his growing carnal need as her own.

 

She starts to do with her hips what she’s doing with her mouth, rolling them into him. He’s done for. If she could only understand what he wants to do to her right now – what he _will_ to do to her right now -

 

_Rey I’m going to drive you crazy then stop then do it again until you beg me to finish this_

 

The bond is sizzling; a livewire, erupting in sparks. Kylo lifts every barrier and opens his mind completely, just this once, to show her the unimaginable pleasure he will give her – every obscene, wonderful, depraved thing he will do to her body – and how profoundly he needs her.

 

But Rey sees none of that.

 

It’s all wrong. First, the monster; then, what it conceals.

 

It’s a hulking beast of a man spearing lightning from splayed fingertips into face-down canine corpses, freshly dead, their muscles still twitching and shuddering in the dust.

 

It’s shearing a sputtering scarlet blade through Koya Ren’s neck and ripping away the head, silencing his inhuman screams.

 

It’s Al-Jinn’s blood jetting from a gaping wound, spattering his face. Her gurgling shrieks. Loose shreds of flesh hanging from her cheeks, not stopping there, hacking the blades again and again.

 

And it’s the traitor – FN-2187 - collapsing facedown in the snow, near-dead after Kylo Ren carved up into the length of his spinal column.

 

All of the unspeakable images at the forefront of his thoughts.

 

He feels Rey stiffen and she suddenly draws back, shoving him away and scrambling to her feet on wobbly legs. Her face is pale and drawn, eyes full of panic. “Oh… gods...” she whimpers.

 

As though she is mortified with _herself_.

 

And she’s gone.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quotes:**  
>  Buddha: “What we think, we become.”  
> Anonymous: “Your soulmate is not someone that comes into your life peacefully. It is who comes to make you question things, who changes your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone has idealised, but an ordinary person, who managed to revolutionise your world in a second.”  
> Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (9 December 1906 – 1 January 1992): "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."
> 
>  **Twi'leki/Ryl Translations:**  
>  _Quinjon_ = prisoners  
>  _Wasnawa uba, wasnawa jay_ = it isn’t yours, it isn’t mine.  
>  _Nobra edgra_ = I’m sorry  
>  _Alask bril tarkona_ = sandstorm  
>  _Nerra_ = brother  
>  _Numa_ = sister
> 
>  **Minor Character from Solo: A Star Wars Story:**  
>  Margo (Imroosian) [here](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Margo_\(Imroosian\))  
> 


	21. ...Nxc3!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey had always assumed, during long, cold nights alone in a plastene tent, in moments she will never speak of... that he'd be as inexperienced as her. He'd be sweet and gentle, shy, perhaps, and together they would slowly learn to love and make love, learn each other's bodies and explore everything that comes so naturally to the other couples around her.
> 
> He's none of those things.
> 
> But he seems more than willing to teach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical inspiration for this chapter: [She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixw_bLVUL34=)

 

 

In the crumbling Pnakotic Coast Village, once home to the silent race, there are beggars on every corner. It’s not much of anything any more, just a barren plane sprouting rocky hoodoos by the coastline, dotted with fraying tents and tumbledown stone huts. For years, it has served as remote spaceport for illegal exporters of Savareen brandy and a rendezvous point for Outer Rim gangs, hoping to strike a deal.

 

Many of the panhandlers work the same corner every day. People get to know them; most will avoid them. Behind the grime and stench, they cease to be human; blending into the raggedy beige tents and yellow sand that stretches all the way to the coast. They come here hoping for a scrap of food, a dram of brandy from a benevolent trader, and when they die, the sandstorms and simooms swallow up their emaciated corpses.

 

One such nondescript fellow sits primly inside a mostly-intact urtya tent, awaiting his guests. His plasteel sidearm is concealed underneath a tattered grey poncho. The blaster is his own. The clothing was stripped from a pilgrim’s corpse – some hapless nomad passing through the village, wanting passage off-world without an identification plate. A patch carelessly stitched into its lining reads `Wolfid Dorna;’ so today, this will be his name. It’s as good an alias as any. His gorraslug-leather moccasins, also appropriated, are too small. They pinch his toes. But he _is_ mind-numbingly banal this way – a kind of character so ordinary as to be invisible.

 

He would prefer his officer’s greatcoat.

 

He would prefer his goddamn _throne._

 

He smells them before he sees them: four contemptible scoundrels rambling gracelessly through the sand, bickering among themselves. Their faces are well-known in the criminal underworld, easy to find on the right HoloNet backchannel. They’re late. GL-OT15, at least, was punctual. And quiet.

 

“You got the goods? This better be worth our while,” Bala-Tik demands rudely, as if that’s any way to address a man of his calibre.

 

The man rises to his feet to welcome the head of the Guavian Death Gang and his security soldier as they barge through the tent flap. Leech and Qin-Fee are close behind, blaster rifles drawn. They're all running with sweat, oily hair plastered to their foreheads. Their armour is ridiculous for this sultry climate, layer upon layer of black plastoid and leather and sporadillo.

 

Kanjiklub and the Guavians are very small fish among the assorted criminal cartels running riot throughout the galaxy, but united, they’d be a start.

 

Margo was much wiser, to have sent a droid.

 

It’s a marvel they haven’t killed each other already.

 

“Greetings, gentleman,” he begins with all the dignity he can muster, affording them a reluctant bow. “I trust you have come alone, in accordance with our last communication?”

 

In answer, four blaster barrels are pointed at his head. Leech sneers behind his Huttsplitter rifle, babbling something unintelligible. The tip of his vibro-spike is stained with black ichor, too dark to be human blood.

 

“Lower your weapons, my friends,” he placates, presenting his open palms to show that he’s defenceless. His polite request falls on deaf ears. “It seems to me that we share a common enemy: the First Order. That makes us comrades-in-arms.”

 

“Where’s the merchandise?!” Qin-Fee spits. No pleasantries, for these savages. The lieutenant’s blaster is rusty, its barrel encased in a yellow external accelerator cage. He waves it in the beggar’s face, side-eyeing his rival clan members suspiciously.

 

Their host scoffs, gazing past them all to address the droid. If there’s any grain of truth to the Hutts’ shadowfeeds, Crimson Dawn might be his most willing ally right now; the First Order has dishonoured the treaty that Sheev Palpatine and Dryden Vos so meticulously compiled forty solar cycles ago. “First, we will discuss the terms of our agreement. Should we all concur, _then_ you may see the weapons.” He tries to slur his words a little; his naturally precise articulation is not fitting for his assumed persona.

 

“We'll see 'em first, or you’re a dead man,” snarls Bala-Tik, jabbing a percussive cannon at his chest.

 

Unfazed, the mendicant holds out his hands to them. Underneath the dirt, where he had scrubbed them in the soil, his fingernails are impeccably manicured. “You would do well to listen, gentlemen,” he implores, staring beyond the blasters to the stationary vendor unit. “And _madam_. All I ask for is a moment of your time, and I can weaponise your syndicates beyond your wildest dreams.”

 

Margo’s voice hums through the droid's cranial speaker. “Who are you, to summon us here with such ambitious claims?”

 

“Wolfid Dorna, at your service,” he replies without missing a beat. “And I swear to you on the grave of Darth Maul, I never promise what I cannot deliver.”

 

The twin red beams beneath its flat-topped braincase flicker. “We’re listening.”

 

“I happen to know of a massive stockpile of superweapons in the Outer Rim. Enough to vaporise the entire galaxy several times over.” He scratches at his beard and flicks his messy auburn fringe out of his eyes. “Property of the First Order, but such artillery has fallen out of favour and is… ah, shall we say… neglected. With the right tech, their defences could be easily compromised.”

 

“Only a stoopa steals from the First Order,” says Qin-Fee, translating hastily to his leader.

 

“Ah, _but_.” The man simpers, revealing a pristine row of white teeth. “What if security was minimal? Not so poor that Kanjiklub, the Guavians or whatever’s left of Crimson Dawn could infiltrate it alone -” he nods at each member of his audience in turn - “but _together_ , united, we would be a force to be reckoned with.”

 

“Show me the weapons!” Bala-Tik growls.

 

Nodding calmly, the redheaded beggar reaches into the front pouch of his poncho and withdraws a holopad communicator, concealing its telltale insignia with the heel of his hand. The stench of his own attire is abhorrent; it grates on his nerves to present himself in such a dishevelled state. He’d been loathed to peel them off the old drunkard’s body, moreso to don them himself. Somewhere, just inland from the village, is a mound of dirt encasing a scrawny-limbed, potbellied carcass with tiny feet, whose miserly existence amounted to nothing. None of his human guests have lowered their blaster barrels, he notes. More of an annoyance than a threat.

 

Thumbing the holopad, a pellucid column of green light springs to life from its projector. At its centre is a rotating polyhedron, squat at one end, long and conical at the other, various schematics floating around it. It is truly a thing of beauty. Deceptively innocuous, brilliant in its simplicity; its sole purpose: cataclysmic destruction. Three laser turrets adorn its cap, impenetrable armour encasing every panel. The device is near-invincible.

 

Perhaps that contumacious bitch will have proven useful, after all.

 

Leech smooths his sweaty moustache between two fingers and drivels something derisive-sounding to his underling.

 

“A crinking _cone sock?_ ” translates Qin-Fee, equally scornful.

 

He narrows his eyes. Pair of imbeciles. “Gentlemen, I would hardly afford you the inconvenience of -”

 

“Karking Cerean cone,” interrupts Bala-Tik, eyeing him askance. “Seen ‘em on Coruscant.” He aims his cannon at the mendicant’s neck. “What’s your game, poodoo? Give me one good reason not to paint the walls with you right now for wasting my time.”

 

Heck, the First Order psytechs would have a field day with these cocky laserbrains. One flick of his finger, and he could blast that shavit-eating leer clean off Bala-Tik’s face, right this instant. But that will never do. Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business.

 

The Kanjiklub leader responds in kind, edging the vibro-spike closer to his throat.

 

 _This_ is what Kylo Ren has reduced him to – disguised as a deadbeat scrounger, negotiating with the great unwashed. With another tap on the communicator’s rim, its three-dimensional imagery trebles in size and begins to rotate. With his left hand, he waves the holopad in front of his chest, capturing the crime lords’ attention while his right delves into his trouser pocket. Despite their unbridled contempt, their eyes follow it raptly, as though it were a bioluminescent swarm of glowflies.

 

“That couldn’t possibly be what I think it is,” Margo’s voice trills from the droid. The sensor modules in GL-OT15’s head will already have detected his sidearm, he realises.

 

Beneath the poncho, Dorna’s fingers clench over the butt of his blaster. Four quick shots to the gut, and then what? Every additional crime syndicate he contacts escalates an already incalculable risk. “And what would that be, madam?”

 

“I think it’s a Sun Crusher.”

 

There's a momentary hush. Tasu Leech turns to his lieutenant, taken aback at his hasty translation, and a string of incomprehensible gabble ensues.

 

The tramp likes what he's hearing. “Indeed, my lady. And not just one – fifty, guaranteed; perhaps as many as one hundred and fifty.”

 

“And how, pray tell, does one come upon the knowledge of a weapons stockpile sufficient to obliterate the entire galaxy?”

 

A tight, humourless grin crosses his features. He’s rehearsed this. “I have it on good authority, madam, that the project has been abandoned. It seems our inconstant sovereign leader vacillates between ruling our galaxy and destroying it.” The gang leaders have lowered their weapons a smidge, he observes, intrigued now that he’s sparked the interest of someone more prestigious. “How I came upon such knowledge is irrelevant.”

 

“You’re another deserter,” accuses the droid.

 

“I prefer the term _emancipated,_ madam,” he corrects. “If you possess such firepower, then _you_ command the Order.”

 

“Tell me more about these weapons.”

 

Dorna draws a measured breath. All four dullards have their blaster rifles hanging loosely by their sides now. “They're small, deadly and undetectable.”

 

Leech’s mouth falls agape. Oh, yes. He has him now.

 

“But the true power of a Sun Crusher – for the benefit of the unlearned amongst us - is its energy resonance torpedoes. Housed here.” Withdrawing his hand from the trigger, he waves it through the apex of the cone. “Upon impact, they render a star’s core unstable, initiating a chain reaction that quickly escalates into a supanova. One shot will obliterate an entire system.”

 

Bala-Tik wipes his brow, leaving a greasy stain. “So, useless when you have three TIE fighters on your tail,” he comments disparagingly.

 

Dorna shoots him a withering glare. Typical lowlife scum; short-sighted, arrogant, indifferent to the interests of others. How has an idiot like this survived in the criminal underworld for this long? If not for his four onlookers and the unwanted attention it might draw, he’d put a plasma bolt through his brainless skull right here and now, he considers. Thou shalt not suffer a fool to live.

 

“An image is one thing,” Margo’s voice chimes curtly. “What assurance do I have that you will be true to your word?”

 

“Trust me, I will.” He deactivates the holoprojector.

 

“Trust is something to be earned, _comrade_. Crimson Dawn will not commit forces until I have proof – both of the whereabouts of these superweapons, and that you can access them.”

 

He quirks an eyebrow. Does Margo truly believe her syndicate has the manpower to tackle this alone? Uniting these ragtag marauders is already seeming like too much of a headache.

 

“I’m not prepared to negotiate the terms of our agreement nor commit my armada to securing these weapons until I have visual confirmation of the number that exist, and how heavily they're defended,” she continues.

 

Her _armada?_ Now, _that_ certainly sounds promising. From Yago’s ramblings over the communications grid, one could easily assume that the Crimson Dawn organisation had been winnowed down to almost nothing. But Yago has always been unfettered by the truth. Perhaps it’s time to rethink his strategy. There may be a simpler alternative, far superior to an all-out attack on the Bilbringi Shipyard. Eyeballing the crime lords belligerently, Dorna considers how inessential they have just become.

 

“You’re a barvy chuba, wanting to take on the First Order like this,” quips Qin-Fee, half-accusingly, half-admiringly. “And I thought hauling rathtars took balls.”

 

“Ah, my friend,” the vagrant replies, staring beyond him to the vendor droid. “Minimal defences, I assure you. Besides, the reward justifies the risk. With weapons of this potential, the Order shall be ours.”

 

The lieutenant’s lips peel back in a grin, displaying blackened, chipped teeth, and he hurriedly translates to Leech. Thus enlightened, the leader of Kanjiklub appraises the beggar anew, interest and caution mingling in his hoggish eyes.

 

With headlights twinkling, Margo’s vendor unit reanimates. “Comrade, we shall reconvene here in twenty four standard hours. None of you are to be armed at that time.”

 

In answer, Bala-Tik expectorates a glob of tobacco-stained spittle at it.

 

Pointing a black-plated digit at Dorna, the droid’s crimson lights blink again. “Should my colleagues concur, GL-OT15 will have instructions on how to proceed at that time.”

 

The beggar gives another low, subservient bow. “Certainly.”

 

“If the GL unit is not here, all deals are off.”

 

“Understood, madam,” he replies, saccharine-sweet. He won’t be kowtowing for much longer. “But know this: if you are satisfied with our reconnaissance mission, we shall discuss the terms of our agreement in person. Face to face. I do not normally negotiate with bots.”

 

“If we are satisfied, comrade, then it will be so.”

 

“Until tomorrow, then. I shall look forward to our next meeting.”

 

The droid turns away without a farewell and, disturbingly humanlike in its fluidity, shuffles out of the tent. Dorna watches it leave with barely muted glee.

 

This arrangement is proceeding better than he could possibly have anticipated. If the First Order has indeed targeted her syndicate, then Margo is no little fish. His perceived misdemeanor – torturing information out of three Rakata Prime prisoners, unauthorised – would be more than forgiven with a grand gesture of loyalty such as presenting the Order with the figurehead of Crimson Dawn. A gift so munificent as to remind those in power of his worth, and even if he is not reinstated to his former glory as second-in-command, he will claw his way back.

 

He’s no stranger to playing the long game.

 

The droid is barely out of sight before Bala-Tik pipes up. “Kanjiklub is interested. Right here, right now, we’ll cut a deal, Red.” He squints at the Guavian duo. “Though we could use extra manpower, if you want in.”

 

Qin-Fee runs his tongue over discoloured teeth. He is a truly hideous excuse for a human being, the very archetype of the lowlife scum infesting the galaxy. They all are. “We’re in.” He yammers some muddled jargon to his superior, who nods and grunts assent.

 

Dorna stares down his nose at them all. This little endeavour of his need not be quite this agonising. Commandeering Sun Crushers is a ruse, now; a potential backup plan, but one he anticipates will not be necessary. Raiding the shuttles of Kanjiklub and the Guavian Death Gang, however, could certainly be an entertaining pastime while he awaits Margo’s decision tomorrow.

 

“Have we dealt with you before?” Bala-Tik adds dubiously. “Y’look familiar. I can’t quite...” He waves a gloved hand vaguely in the beggar’s direction.

 

The mendicant feigns a smile, gesturing to the patterned Huj mat at their feet. “Please have a seat, gentlemen. I’m _sure_ we can come to an agreement, with or without our Imroosian associate.”

 

He’s met with four pairs of distrustful eyes, but their arms hang limply by their sides, weapons still loose in their fingers.

 

Good.

 

“Let’s share a wee nip of Savareen brandy to mark the occasion, shall we?” Slipping his right hand back into his trouser pocket, he curls a finger on the trigger. “ _Always_ carry a flask with me. Refined connoisseurs drink refined spirits, my friends.”

 

Leech grunts noncommittally, muttering something about thikkiian firewater under his breath.

 

“My fine fellow,” the vagrant admonishes, his voice dripping with honey, “Savareen is the nectar of the gods. Sublime, to the discerning palate.”

 

He might as well be speaking Shyriiwook for all its significance to these sewer-rats – but an offer of free liquor has piqued their interest. Of course it has. The Guavian footsoldier even reaches back to reholster his rifle.

 

They’re the last words any of them hear.

 

One second and four well-aimed trigger-pulls later, General Hux has substantially more powerful weaponry to souvenir, and two nonmilitary transporters at his disposal. His plan is infinitely simpler now, too, with only one cartel to deal with, one big fish to reel in.

 

After all, Grand Admiral Sloane always _did_ counsel him to keep it simple.

 

He heaves a sigh; another four stinking lumps of meat to drag out into the desert beyond the village. Small mercy he won’t have to bury them, at least – the swirling sands will take care of that. Should he leave them to rot where they fell, the corpses of potential business partners may otherwise bode poorly for tomorrow’s negotiations.

 

Hux does not like to get his hands dirty.

 

For his entire tenure, he has fought and won battles from the safety of a temperature-controlled, pressurised command deck, behind deflector shields, on the backs of subordinates. Wetwork is beneath the commander in chief of the First Order army. Hux has made it perfectly clear to his underlings that without his guidance, all things will become uncertain. Unsafe. Unknown. A flock of twenty million, with no shepherd.

 

It makes his skin crawl to imagine what that vacuous lunatic is doing with his army.

 

 

~

 

 

Rey had always assumed, during long, cold nights alone in a plastene tent, in moments she will never speak of... that he'd be as inexperienced as her. He'd be sweet and gentle, shy, perhaps, and together they would slowly learn to love and make love, learn each other's bodies and explore everything that comes so naturally to the other couples around her.

 

He's none of those things.

 

But he seems more than willing to teach.

 

Ben’s hair is soft and luxuriant, and when she tugs at it, he lets out an low moan. The way he stares at her between kisses when they break apart, with his breath coming hard, makes her feel a little lightheaded. One solar cycle ago, he had looked at her the same way when he lifted the final Praetorian Guard’s vibro-voulge away from his neck. With searing dark eyes, naked longing and lust.

 

Her hands work their way around his body, mapping each crevasse, every line of his perfect physique. She can't get enough of him, licking the tension from her mouth until she melts against him, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on just to get her fill of his lips, his tongue. He’s leading her into unchartered territory, kissing her like a man starved... as if he's waited a lifetime for her.

 

She wants him everywhere. All of him. Touching her with those clever hands and that lush mouth, in stark contrast to the predator who tormented and attacked her in the forest. Everything is new and wonderful and frightening. Every movement elicits new sensations. When he kisses her neck, his lips feel like they’re leaving a trail of sparks along their path, and when he bites her... it makes her want things, forbidden things she's only ever glimpsed in holovids. His stiffening member presses against her stomach as she straddles him, rolling her hips against it in search of something she can't begin to name. He grunts every time she does it; a base, animalistic sound that reminds her of when he’s in combat. It’s a heady rush. It makes her feel powerful that _she_ – little Rey of Jakku – can do this to a man like Ben Solo.

 

This isn’t anything like she had anticipated, pursuing him for his offered tuition with the Sacred Texts. Casting aside girlish infatuation - and stupid attempts at intimacy - to focus on her education, seemed like the mature thing to do. She’d sought Ben out, knowing instinctively that he is a man of his word.

 

And then… _this._

 

Are they really going to do this? Now… through the bond? In her darkest, most secret fantasies - ones she will never admit to anyone, much less herself - she has always imagined they would be really, physically together. Except... the last time they were together, on Seregar, he'd been terrifying. He'd been _Kylo Ren;_ cruel, unfeeling, exhuding raw power. It still doesn't feel safe - even from across the stars. It's like her stomach is dropping away, like piloting an X-wing when she’s about to try something very dangerous or very stupid. Nosediving straight into… whatever he’s going to do to her.

 

But by the time he is mouthing soft kisses at her jugular, his crooked teeth scraping against sensitive flesh – her mind is too muddled to care.

 

 _Rey I’m going to drive you crazy then stop then do it again until you beg me to finish this._ His lips graze her jawline and he bites her softly.

 

Ben’s mind suddenly breaks wide open, unguarded, and the projections he shows her make her pulse race.

 

_Kiss me, kiddo._

 

The words come from Rey – but it’s her, and not her. Her figure is much larger, broad-shouldered and hefty, with violet-tinged skin. And this incarnation of Rey is experienced and confident; she can take whatever she wants. Ben’s mouth is crowding hers, but she twines her fingers firmly into his sable mop, guiding his head lower.

 

_Not there. Here._

 

Long tresses of his hair tickle her tummy as she pushes him exactly where she wants him. The feeling of his hot breath on her mound makes her spine prickle. In Ben’s chamber, in his arms, Rey tenses. _Oh._ Oh, _Maker,_ he’s going to do _that._

 

His big nose nudges her clit. It’s only a fluke, beginner’s luck, but she shivers all the same. This is going to be good... delicious. He’s eager to please. So bold, for a young padawan. His tongue darts out to taste her, hesitant, experimental.

 

Han smiles and steps forward along the gangway, reaching for the weapon.

 

The Keshiri padawan’s – _Rey’s -_ soft sighs spur him on. He drags the flat of his tongue in a broad stripe between her inner lips, slow and savouring, snaking a hand around each of her spread thighs to hold her in place. When she grinds into his mouth, he swipes his tongue against the sensitive bundle of nerve endings at the apex. Emboldened by her short, breathless moan, he wraps his lips around her clit and begins to suckle greedily.

 

Her strangled cries grow louder. Someone will hear her, for sure, but she doesn't give a frack - so long as he doesn't stop. He’s too good at this for a beginner, and he’s in her mind already, brushing aside any half-hearted defences to seek out all the places she likes, how hard she likes it, how fast.

 

Ben’s consciousness continues to unspool, subsuming Rey completely. It’s overwhelming and obscene and disarmingly arousing. Here and now in his sleeping chamber, Ben deepens their kiss and digs his fingers – hard – into that special spot at the base of her spine he has discovered, the one that makes her melt. He knows exactly what he’s projecting, quietly revelling in her surprise. He's still teaching her, she realises absently.

 

Her hips arch up to meet every flick of his tongue. The boy is lapping at her voraciously and she clenches, exhaling in a rush. Her mind is addled – it’s going to snap. _Stars,_ how she will reward him for this, he might just be her new favourite -

 

 _I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it._ A peculiar sensation touches his cheeks – dampness. He hasn’t shed tears for longer than he can remember. _Will you help me?_

 

When the moment comes, he doesn’t hesitate. Ben ignites the lightsaber in his father’s hands and its beam lances outward, burning through Han’s chest from front to back.

 

 _Thank you._ The deed has cemented his loyalty to Master Snoke and the dark side of the Force, but deep inside, something breaks.

 

_That weapon is mine._

 

_Come an' get it!_

 

Shards of light fly through the ice-encrusted forest, illuminating the snowfall. The traitor, who ought to have been reprogrammed or exterminated by now, has instead pilfered his grandfather’s weapon and stabbed him with it. Yet another scar to add to the collection. Playtime is over.

 

Rey peers into his face; that wide-eyed, eager boy from before is gone. He’s a fraction older now, his body solid and monolithic, straddling her. There's something joyless about the hard set of his features, something distant and hollow in his eyes, as though any joie de vivre has already been snuffed out. His breath reeks of whiskey. So does hers. She’s no longer a Keshiri, but a fuller-figured woman with turquoise skin patterned in thin lines, like dried mudcracks in the sediment. They’re both soused, and while he’s still fully clothed, she lies bare beneath him.

 

His fingers find her clit and circle it with firm strokes. Gloved hands. Cold leather. She’d prefer him naked, she thinks, sliding her sharp talons beneath his tunic.

 

In his sleeper, Ben wraps his hands around her waist and pulls her flush against him. His arousal is rigid and growing against her belly. Murmuring something unintelligible into her ear, something like _this is for you,_ he nips at her earlobe. His fingers skirt the hemline of her tunic then steal underneath, skimming ever-so-softly over her skin. Teasing her.

 

A brutal slash sends his lightsaber flying from FN-2187’s grip, and before the hubristic ‘trooper can seize it to attack again, Ben slices into his spinal column with casual ease. Finally – he will reclaim what is rightfully his.

 

_Lazy chickenshit! You are Princess Leia’s snivelling son after all. Slags to the light, both of you! Tooska chai mani!_

 

The torrent of intermingled visions is dizzying. She doesn’t want to see _this;_ any of it. She’s losing herself in the sweet warmth of his mouth. Ben curls his tongue expertly against hers, and her body responds to him even as her mind begins to scream, desperate and crazed, in the Force.

 

Barbed fingernails scratch into his lower back, bunching the fabric of his tunic and easing it up, until an unseen force rips her hands away and slams them into the ground beside her head. In the seconds it takes him to re-cover himself, the Squamatan - _Rey -_ glimpses fresh wounds concealed on his torso; burns and bruises scored into ivory skin. The tiny muscle below his left eye begins to twitch. Having immobilised her completely now, arms pinned and her body caged between his splayed knees, he recommences his glorious assault.

 

Al-Jinn Ren is a murderer and a coward. Now is the time for vengeance. She will suffer for what she did to Leia Organa.

 

The alien, unfeeling monster slicing its Kyuzo petar blades through her blasphemous mouth is neither Ben Solo nor Kylo Ren. Her profanities degenerate into gurgling shrieks as a beast flays her alive with superhuman speed. There’s no escape from beneath the giant straddling her, left hand pinning her chest to the ground while his right carves into her flesh. Blood jets from her open carotids, soaking through their clothes, his face, his hair.

 

 _Well done, my worthy apprentice,_ comes a familiar rasp at the edges of his subconscious, through the wearying certainty that he will be horrified with himself later, when some semblance of sanity returns. _If_ it returns this time.

 

_Fuck me, brave Jedi._

 

The low timbre of Ben’s voice is like velvet. _Patience, sweetheart._

 

He’s rubbing her in hard circles while she writhes beneath him, as much as her restraints will allow. Being incapacitated like this can’t be natural, she thinks – but this kid is kriffing _stunning,_ and she’s too inebriated to protest. Finally succumbing to her heated pleas, he slides a leather-clad finger into her, then another, his thumb still pressed tightly to her clit.

 

In Ben's chamber, Rey shudders. The fractured chaos of it all is making her head spin. His adamantine grip around her tightens until it feels like she's being crushed.

 

He finds that ridge inside that makes her – Rey, the nameless Squamatan – see stars, curling his thick fingers into it as if beckoning her. Groaning shamelessly, she struggles against the invisible shackles tethering her wrists. He’s relentless. With a low, filthy chuckle, he rubs it and rubs it until she is a twitching, quivering mess. He's meting out her pleasure, ignoring her demands to shuck those stupid breeches and give her everything she deserves.

 

He will covet Al-Jinn’s ashes. She got exactly what she deserved.

 

 _Think you’re worthy of Supreme Leadership?! Fracking embarrassment. Weak… pitiful... foolish... madman._ Sheathed in lightsaber-resistant armour, the Knight Kylo has led faithfully for eight solar cycles lunges and drives a lightwhip into his throat, thrusting harder to emphasise every word. The dark lord has no weapon of his own for defence. Koya Ren will kill him today and claim the title of of Supreme Leader.

 

Rey knows this place. It’s the temple on Tython, where the Kel Dor attacked her and lost.

 

She hears vulgar sounds: thumping against wood, the rhythmic slap of wet skin on skin, and Ben, grunting behind her with every aggressive thrust. He’s hammering Rey into the pulpit with all of his considerable strength – _and_ the purple humanoid again. Rose had warned her it’s supposed to hurt the first time – but this isn’t the Keshiri’s first time, and it doesn’t hurt at all. Not from Ben’s perspective. She’s panting, bent double over the lectern and pinioned in place with one of his big hands splayed against her sacrum, the other clenched around her ponytail.

 

It’s risky. Anyone might see them, _Skywalker_ might catch them, but isn’t that the giddy thrill of it? The boy she so _scrupulously_ tutored has dragged her into the sacred edifice, up onto the dais, and is fucking her into oblivion.

 

Tomorrow, Master Skywalker will preach to them all from the podium that Ben has her pinned to now. She’s teetering on the crest of mindless ecstasy. He’s _never_ been this domineering before, and he’s filling her and he’s fracking _huge -_

 

 _Mercy,_ she mewls, her insides clenching. _Mercymercymercy-_ the words fall to pieces in her mouth, ripped apart by a strangled cry as she comes.

 

 _M - mercy, my brother,_ Koya pleads, looking up at him like a frightened, wounded animal. What’s left of his legs are smoking stumps below the knees. The aroma of grilling meat fills the chamber.

 

There will be no mercy for this treacherous Sithspit. Koya’s caterwauling rends the air – a primal, inhuman sound, understanding at the last moment what the Supreme Leader intends to do. Wrapping a fist in his sweat-drenched hair, Kylo dismembers him with steely-eyed indifference.

 

The Keshiri’s whole body goes rigid and she sobs out a torrent of expletives, but he sets his jaw, pounding her through it ruthlessly. Pounding _Rey_ through it. She’ll be sore tomorrow. Her forehead smacks against the podium with each deep, vigorous thrust. When he feels his own orgasm mounting, he yanks her head back into an uncomfortable arch, folds over her and sinks his teeth into her nape, hard enough to hurt.

 

 _You’re mine, schutta,_ he growls through gritted teeth.

 

He doesn’t love her. He isn’t capable of that any more. But he won’t be used up and thrown away like an old dishrag by this whore, never again.

 

The entire horde is dead, prostrated in the dust like worshippers before their god. Never again will they starve, beat or torture a slave. The dark Force bounds through his veins, elevating him to something more than human; beyond a neglected son, an abused padawan, a protégé whose trusted Master betrayed him, or a _good and faithful_ apprentice to be tortured under the guise of `training.’ For one shimmering, ethereal moment, he is the darkness personified. Not Kylo Ren; something far greater. White-hot lightning knifes from his fingers, spearing the carcasses of his victims.

 

The conflation of sex and bloodlust is making her sick to her stomach. She has seen what Ben really is, and it’s horrifying beyond belief.

 

One final shove, and she’s free of his heady spell.

 

Rey staggers backward on shaky legs. It’s suddenly hard to breathe. The pulsing between her thighs doesn’t stop, and she squirms, rubbing them together. Her lips still tingle from his fervid kisses.

 

No, no, not now, not in front of this… this… _thing._

 

He’s watching her breathlessly, glassy-eyed, his entire body trembling. What’s wrong with her? What she’d wanted – what they were about to _do..._ she loathes herself for it. Her thoughts burgeon with revulsion and unwelcome, lingering desire.

 

“Oh… gods...” she whimpers.

 

The monster vanishes. It’s over. She doesn’t think she can ever look him in the eye again.

 

 

~

 

 

The Force around Ben has always been shot through with veins of darkness, but she saw the fissures as well – jagged cracks in the shell constructed around a broken man, just enough to pour in her healing light and make him whole. _You’ll turn,_ she had promised, and meant it. _I’ll help you._

 

But what he has shown her is beyond anything she fears. Pure, unadulterated evil and depravity, and the madness that accompanies it.

 

He _relishes_ his kills. His powers with the Force are already immense, and still growing.

 

Rey stares forlornly into the binary sunset, feeling an icy chill creep down her spine with the breeze that rustles the canopy overhead, arms erupting into gooseflesh. Isolated on a foreign planet, ostracised by those she called family, with no alternative if she wants to rejoin them than crippling herself with Poe’s cursed necklet, tucking her tail between her legs and slinking back in submission.

 

“ _Rey.”_ Ben’s deep rumble at her back is gentle, but she winces at the sound. He never speaks her name lightly, casually, like the others do. His tone always holds a certain reverence. “Don’t shut me out.”

 

She whirls to face him: the beast who committed all those atrocious, bloodthirsty acts.

 

“Stop fighting it. _You’ll_ be the one to turn. I’ve seen it.”

 

There it is again, that unnervingly intense gaze. And what lies simmering behind it. His liquid eyes are full of longing, splinter-sharp as ever. His breathing is laboured, like hers. She’s made a tousled mess of his sleek, black mane, and his lips are still slick and kiss-swollen. Rey has fired a blaster at him through the connection, crossed blades with him twice and invaded his thoughts while he held her prisoner.

 

But she has never seen him as frightened as he looks right now.

 

Understanding how he justified every grisly murder he's committed is one thing. Being face-to-face with him is entirely another.

 

Severing herself abruptly, she slams the bond shut.

 

It’s as easy as waking from a nightmare, or shutting off a holoprojector. But it feels a little like being hollowed out. Kylo Ren is etched into her heart as plainly as the scar that cleaves his cheek; the only person ever to have listened without blame or expectation, who accepts her as an equal, who yearns to teach her the ways of the Force - despite his allegiance to the enemy. And the lover who haunts her dreams.

 

She wants to pretend he’s still _Ben._

 

Beside her in the grass, the Rammaghon lies forgotten where she dropped it. Numbly, she thumbs open its back cover and slips out the folded parchment he’d tried to confiscate. Its single passage is scrawled in faded calligraphy, one edge ragged as if a strip had been shredded away, but its message is clear.

 

 

**Attachment is forbidden.**

 

**Possession is forbidden.**

 

**Romantic love and carnal relations are not the way of the Jedi.**

 

**Marriage and children are not the way of the Jedi.**

 

**The fear of loss is a path to the dark side of the Force.**

 

**Attachment leads to jealousy, the shadow of greed.**

 

**Let go of your loved ones. Embrace your compassion for all.**

 

 

It’s as though some thousand-generation-old Grand Master is mocking her from beyond the grave.

 

Ben – _Kylo Ren_ \- reaches out again, searching, _wanting._ Balling her hands into fists, she wills herself not to cry and constructs iron-clad walls around her mind. Slammed shut, bolted. She won’t let him in. His pain bristles at the edges of her consciousness.

 

But it’s working. He fails.

 

Rey turns the page over with tremorous hands.

 

 

**Rejoice for all those around us who transform into the Force.**

 

**Do not mourn them.**

 

**Do not miss them.**

 

**Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.**

 

 

Ben is relentless – she can still feel him beating at the fringes of her mind, trying desperately to smash his way through. Scouring for a crack in her armour. He must believe he’s stronger than her, or that with dogged perseverance, she will yield.

 

She won’t. It takes a focused effort. Her mental barricades are impenetrable, unassailable.

 

While Rey watches the twin suns coalesce and sink below the horizon with the Sacred Text in her lap, trying to block him out with meditation, his ruthless onslaught continues. He thrashes at it nonstop while she plunges into the river, and later, when she builds a roaring campfire and huddles before it, wrapping the oversized sackcloth robe around her still-dripping form. Biting back the tears pricking at her eyes, she reinforces the blockade until his frenzied efforts are little more than an itch at the back of her mind.

 

He’s still going when the fire recedes and she crawls into her sleep-cocoon, folds her knees into her chest and begins to weep. When the moons grow high and full, the temperature plunges. Any residual warmth from the glowing embers seems to be sucked into the frigid air before it reaches her; she will be cold and alone again tonight. The sobs come harder, thrashing and building until each wave overlaps the last. There is no one in this infinite universe just for her, to cherish her and be cherished in return.

 

Attachment is forbidden. The belonging she sought was an idealistic daydream. If Rey truly wants to fulfil her destiny, that is exactly as it should be. The same Force that showed her a surreal succession of her own reflections in the sea cave is pushing her down a path she doesn’t want to tread, letting go of everything and everyone to surrender herself to its will.

 

Alone in her AT-AT on Jakku every night, five-year-old Rey did what any child with an overactive imagination would do – hide under her blanket from the fanciful nocturnal monsters roaming the desert. If you can’t see them, they can’t see you. The creature that pursues her now, however, is all too real.

 

Part of her yearns to give up, open her arms to him, allow herself to be warmed and comforted and touched like no one has ever touched her before. Like she means _everything_ to someone. He's evil, like the infinite darkness hidden beneath the island on Ahch-To. Calling her. She won't think of herself under Kylo Ren, being fucked senseless under those burning eyes like the Keshiri woman. She buries it deep, disgusted, crying harder and clutching the quilted fabric of her sleep-cocoon to her chest. There are only the stars to hear her weep. She won’t surrender to temptation.

 

Poe’s neural disruptor collar catches her eye, glinting in the moonlight.

 

She doesn’t have to be alone.

 

Everyone _else_ she loves is a only a klick downriver.

 

After what feels like an eternity, Ben’s attempts weaken, come further apart, then stop altogether.

 

 

~

 

 

Waiting patiently has never been one of Poe Dameron’s strengths.

 

Behind the control yoke of an X-wing, everything makes sense. Blast your laser cannons at hostiles, proton torpedos if it’s anything bigger than a TIE-fighter, outmanoeuvre, outlast. Keep your squadron alive. Black One’s grafted booster engine made it easy – exhilarating – to zip through a dogfight, hoping his luck would hold out once more and the acceleration wouldn’t rip the starfighter to pieces, or knock him unconscious. One proton torpedo from the Supreme Loser, however, had put a fiery end to all that.

 

He’s limited to a standard-issue, bog-stock T-65 now; beggars can’t be choosers. It’s really put a dampener on his aerial acrobatics. At least Goss is happier. The already overburdened starship maintenance tech is tired of repairing battle damage to their fleet, and cringes every time Poe dreams up a new mod to soup up his starfighter.

 

Besides, it isn’t what you’ve got, it’s how you use it. And if anything goes seriously awry, BB-8 can usually fix it.

 

Flying a single X-wing into the teeth of a Star Destroyer, however, is really going to put his skills to the test.

 

And one or two pilots against a battlecruiser’s contingent of fifty thousand... could be a challenge.

 

On paper, the plan seems watertight. No one will see them coming, not with each of their ten X-wings fully equipped with stygium-powered cloaking devices and the bafflers Rose installed. They have clearance codes to every active Resurgent-class Star Destroyer in the First Order Navy, obtained at the cost of a pack of chewstim. Pittance. Evidently, the Zann Consortium wants the Order gone just as much as he does. Slipping through their shields will be easy.

 

The attacks need to be simultaneous, synchronised and executed with pinpoint precision. After the first strike, the First Order will be anticipating others. They'll strengthen their shields, change their codes, probably upgrade their sensor technology. Their capacity for self-defence is limitless.

 

But that’s a problem for later. For now, the Resistance’s only objective is to survive the first wave.

 

Sneak aboard the battlecruisers, drop the payloads, hightail it out of there. Simple. They needn’t even encounter a single Stormtrooper. Take out one third of the First Order Navy without ever firing a shot. The entire operation will only require twelve or so members of his squadron; minimal personnel, minimal potential for casualties, even if everything ends up completely farkled. Enfys and her Cloud-Riders have agreed to an alliance, on the condition that they themselves are not deployed.

 

Tonight, he will honour the memory of General Leia Organa-Solo and prove himself worthy of his new role as general of the Resistance army.

 

“Happy beeps,” he mutters to the little astromech rolling circles around his feet.

 

BB-8 tootles out an apprehensive string of binary.

 

“Buddy,” he gripes back, “never tell me the odds.”

 

Flanked by Nien Nunb, two recruits and all ten of the Cloud-Riders of Bri’n, General Dameron stands tall beside the bonfire and looks into the expectant faces of his compatriots. He hopes he can deliver this speech with the import and gravitas it deserves.

 

“I bring grave news, comrades. We are the very last of the Resistance. Our friends, the Cloud-Riders, are joining us, however - as I’m sure many of you already know - the First Order has destroyed all our remaining bases. But we are not alone. In every part of the galaxy, the downtrodden and oppressed know our symbol. We are their last bastion of hope.” His neck flushes beet-red, self-conscious at reiterating Holdo’s words.

 

Poe holds their undivided attention; fifty pairs of eyes fixed on him, flickering in the firelight. A diverse menagerie: alien and human, young and old, male and female, united by their pursuit of freedom. Those who have defended their cause for generations, those who have just joined the fight, and those seeking refuge from the despotism of the Order. They want reassurance, a promise that things will get better.

 

“I won’t minimise the gravity of our situation. Kylo Ren has amassed an army of a million or more against us. I cannot force you to fight with me, beyond your own conscience, and a will to do what is right.”

 

Stepping forward beside him, Enfys lifts away her ornate battle helmet, lacquered black decorated with ancient blades and narglatch tusks. If Poe’s regiment was intimidated by her initially, what they see now gives them pause. Under the helmet, she’s just an old woman, aged beyond a her years and paying the price for the hard-knock life of a pirate. The lines on her face are deep and saggy, as if the skin is no longer tethered to the skull underneath, and her gait, trudging back to base camp, was stiff and slow. But it was her quick mind and razor-sharp wit that had gotten him; an echo of youth in someone scarcely older than Leia would have been. Enfys Nest is a paragon of hope; an inspiration to those faced with impossible odds. With a driving will to achieve and a little luck, one person really _can_ change the world. She's the reason he steered his entire squadron halfway across the galaxy.

 

If he could be half the warrior this woman once was, Poe thinks, he would be a Titan.

 

“The Cloud-Riders have salvaged eleven viral bombs, each loaded with enough active Blue Shadow to wipe out the entire crew of a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. Old tech, but lethal. Deposited anywhere in the ventilation system, they will turn any battlecruiser into an orbiting mortuary within one standard day. Detonation is timed: we get in, deposit the device, and we’re outta there before they even register a glitch in their shields. One or two pilots per starfighter. No laserfire, no dogfights, and by the grace of the Force, zero losses on our side. Easy.”

 

One mistake, one word out of place, and he’ll lose them all. There’s a muted roar of disquiet among the squadron; worried voices repeating the words `eleven’ and `bounty’, over and over. Yes, they're well aware this won’t take out the whole Order in one fell swoop, and it’ll probably put a target on all their backs once again. Squaring his shoulders, Poe reaches into the neckline of his tunic, seeking out Shara Bey’s ring. It strengthens his resolve. His mother’s death will not have been in vain, nor Kes Dameron’s, nor Leia’s. He’ll never be intimidated by the First Order. They'd made target practice of the Resistance's transporters; it's time for the hunters to become the hunted.

 

“Bri’n is beyond the purview of the First Order, for now. Should you elect not to join me, you can live out your lives here, or wherever you choose. Forge your own path, and good luck to you. This planet – this base – is a safe haven. We need another ten volunteers. I won’t blame any man or woman who doesn’t wish to fight.”

 

Accepting Benthic’s offered rifle, he draws a furrow in the soil with the tip of its barrel.

 

“But I won’t sit here like a mithuk in a burrow, waiting to be pried out. Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it, you’ll never make it through the night. Those of you who will not acquiesce to the rule of thugs… those of you who would fight to the death for our freedom – cross over the line.”

 

Without hesitation, Snap Wexley steps forward, planting both feet on Poe’s side of the line. Karé follows, sliding her hand into his. Both stand tall, heads held high. The general claps them affably on the shoulder.

 

“It will be an honour, General Dameron,” Karé says.

 

Wedge Antilles is next, accepting Poe’s invitation with alacrity. “Always a pleasure to fly with you, Black Leader,” he asserts, a wide grin breaking across his face.

 

Lando and C’ai proudly march over the threshold, then Jessika, then almost all of the recruits, moving together as a single entity like a lost herd of banthas. A bipedal mountain brings up the rear with a sharp series of yips, insisting that he be the pilot personally assigned to Kylo Ren’s flagship.

 

Forty one in total. Only about half can actually pilot an X-wing, he estimates, but the sheer volume of support is overwhelming. With Nunb and himself, he’d only needed ten, and had doubts that he would even get that.

 

All at once, the weight of responsibility feels too great, and his jaw quivers. Their unquestioning loyalty is more than he could ever have hoped for.

 

“Comrades,” Poe addresses them, “I… I...” Voice faltering, he pinches the bridge of his nose, unable to continue. Bursting into tears in front of them all now would be most ungainly for their new chieftain, especially at such a pivotal occasion as this. He feels an arm slide warmly around his shoulders, pulling him in for a brief, shaggy hug that could only be a Wookiee’s. For a second, he wishes he’d made time to get to know Han Solo better - the legendary smuggler-cum-Rebellion general and Chewie’s best buddy.

 

In the next life, perhaps.

 

Poe clears his throat. “I am honoured -”

 

“Cut the bravado, _General._ You’ve earmarked us all for death,” grates an icy female voice.

 

His eyes travel slowly over the heads of those crowded around him to their single protester. Lieutenant Connix, with her arms crossed in defiance, is toeing the opposite site of the line. Ready and willing to face off with him in front of everyone. There are others: eight, perhaps, clustered behind her.

 

“Our bounties are withdrawn. Don’t you understand what that means, _General_ Dameron?” She kicks at the soil, sending up a spray. “It means we’re free! We’re flying under the radar!” Spreading her palms wide, the lieutenant gestures toward the forest, the river, their base camp. “What’s so bad about this place? We have each other, shelter, food, fresh water; everything we need.”

 

Poe scrubs at his face as Chewie releases him. “By living as outlaws! The Supreme Leader has the entire galaxy under his thumb. He controls the food and energy supplies, the people, everything. This autocracy is the cruellest, most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery the galaxy has ever seen. Our families, our clans, our homeworlds suffer every day at the hands of Kylo Ren. And _I_ , for one, refuse to live like this. I will not stand by and do nothing while billions suffer.”

 

“ - and you would provoke war again?!” She’s outraged. “ _Eleven kriffing bombs won’t make a dent on the First Order!_ They’ll rebuild – and then they’ll hunt us!” Connix turns her attention to the bewildered recruits. “Do you really want to sacrifice yourselves on some reckless venture that’ll amount to nothing? Do you think this is what General Organa-Solo would have wanted?!”

 

“Kaydel, shut up,” snaps Wedge.

 

“No, let her speak,” Poe replies, trying to stifle a nagging unease at her words. She isn’t wrong.

 

“We’re _safe_ here,” she spits back.

 

The general draws a deep breath. “And for how long, Lieutenant Connix?”

 

Sweeping one arm across the men crowded behind Poe, she takes a pointed step further away from the line in the soil. “Longer than they’ll last under _you.”_

 

“It’s their decision.”

 

“It’s _your_ call!” She begins to pace the short length of the furrow, back and forth. “You steal away from base camp with _no_ indication of a plan or why we’re even _here_ , and turn up nine days later to announce you’re leading us all on a suicide mission?! We’re not a bunch of disposable clones! Maybe – maybe in time, the right opportunity will present itself. But until then – protect what we have! If you can’t save the galaxy - save _your kriffing galaxy!_ Your words, General! _I_ give up!”

 

He's ready with an equally acid-tongued retort when a gloved hand grasps his wrist. Enfys gazes up at him, her sunken eyes serene and wise. “I’ve been in this game for forty solar cycles, ace,” she drawls hoarsely. “Listen to her. She wants what she believes is best for them all. Just as you do."

 

Poe doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he gently covers her hand with his, and stays silent.

 

Standing at attention, Wedge pounds a fist over his heart. “I stand by my decision, General,” he says proudly.

 

Snap promptly copies, then his wife. Clicking his heels together behind Poe, Chewie utters a reaffirming roar and claps one hand to his chest. The others are quick to follow suit – all but five recruits, who backstep over the line, shamefaced and avoiding eye contact. They reassemble behind Connix.

 

The blonde lieutenant narrows her eyes. “I stand behind _my_ decision, General,” she grits out. “Now isn't the time for heroics. I’m sensor ops, and I have every intention of doing my job. But if you choose to fly into the mouth of the sun-dragon – may the Force be with you all.”

 

He nods respectfully, eyes searching past Connix to catalog her supporters. Identifying the soldier who'd saved his life almost two solar cycles ago among them, his spirits plunge. The couple both look ill at ease: Rose, clinging tightly to Finn’s hand, and Finn, fidgeting and frowning sheepishly back at Poe’s retinue. He looks as though he’d give his eyeteeth to be with them.

 

Poe stares at Finn in stark disbelief. “This one’s important, pal."

 

The former Stormtrooper presses his lips into a tight line and shakes his head. This isn’t like him. Poe would have expected him to come barrelling past them all, first in line to defend his cause.

 

“It’s the right thing to do. It’s worth fighting for,” Poe insists, and Rose tightens her grip, anchoring her beau to the spot and glaring stubbornly back at their leader.

 

Finn stares him straight in the eye. “I can’t,” he replies quietly.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because we’re...” He glances down at Rose, ambivalent and apologetic. “Because… because I’m going to be a father.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quote:** P.T. Barnum (1810-1891): "Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business."
> 
>  **Twi'leki/Ryl Translation:**  
>  _Schutta_ = prostitute
> 
>  **Huttese Translation:**  
>  _Tooska chai mani_ = (curse involving the insulted person's mother and a Tusken Raider's chief)
> 
>  **Minor Characters:**  
>  Enfys Nest (Solo: A Star Wars Story) [here.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Enfys_Nest)  
> Tasu Leech (The Force Awakens) [here.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tasu_Leech)  
> Bala-Tik (The Force Awakens) [here.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bala-Tik)  
> Razoo Qin-Fee (The Force Awakens) [here.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Razoo_Qin-Fee)  
> Wolfid Dorna (The Last Jedi) [the spitting image of Hux (not).](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wolfid_Dorna)


	22. Bc5 Rfe8+

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Lecherous. Old. Man,_ his conscience screams. This beautiful, sensual creature is not here for his voyeuristic pleasure and he has no right to be doing this, any of this.

 

 

She will never get used to this. Every day here is a miracle.

 

The vast swathes of green countryside beyond the outskirts of Sashasa have swallowed up all evidence of the region’s history of internecine warfare. Nearly twenty solar cycles prior to Sinya’s birth, the Confederacy of Independent Systems surrendered Ukio to the Galactic Republic. The five-hectare field where she now stands was once the site of a bloodbath - native human and Ukian farmers who wanted no part in the war, slaughtered by the thousand. Collateral damage when their home planet was such a valuable asset to those in power. The entire sector was a dumping ground for spacecraft destroyed in the Battle of Ukio, scattered piecemeal across the arable land when she arrived. The ship graveyard is a distant memory now, its metal carcasses collected and repurposed, or smeltered down to molten durasteel and recast for agricultural machinery parts and hand tools.

 

Over the years, the barren plains left behind became green and fecund once again. Death and decay, feeding new life. The rolling hills before her do not much care for the doings of men; they have seen the rise and fall of many races, colours and creeds during their long lifetime. The hills undulate across the horizon, dotted with rocky scree slopes, turfs of moss, the solid canopies of woodlands and soft green pastures, broken up with hedgerows like a great patchwork quilt. The grass at the foothills grows thick and coarse, but is kept short by the cattle that graze there.

 

She rolls the sleeves of her flimsy white tunic above her elbows, wipes the sweat from her brow and tugs her pitchfork out of the dirt. This field has supported one season of dry gene wheat, one season of denta beans, and rested for a season; it will be ready for planting as soon as it is properly tilled. Grasping the long handle, she drives its tines into the nutrient-rich soil.

 

“No, m’lady. Like _this_.” Topas rests his own pitchfork against the earth and stamps one heel onto its step, thrusting its prongs into the dirt. Angling the handle towards him, he lifts it like a shovel and overturns the soil. The Ukian race is perfectly evolved for this kind of work, Sinya reflects, watching his movements. His bulky, salmon-coloured arms, low-set on a broad torso, and exaggerated thoracic kyphosis giving his neck a stubby horizontal appearance like a rancor’s, are ideal for hard farmhand labour.

 

She copies Topas obediently, though with considerably more effort, earning an approving nod. Behind them, a quartet of Ukian women dust the soil with fertiliser from large woven sacks. Both tasks could be undertaken by agrirobots in a fraction of the time – the large-scale commercial farms across the Abrion Sector's two hundred agriworlds are well-serviced by sowers, sprayers and harvesters – but the natives’ hand-farmed produce here is second to none. They stubbornly favour the old ways over First Order technology. Within weeks of being encharged with the Sector, Sinya saw to it that the Ukian peasants, who cultivated the land, reclaimed its ownership, having observed their misery at being reassigned as droid maintenance-and-repair slaves under military rule. The Ukians will happily feed the galaxy with their crops in return for the freedom to uphold their ancient traditions.

 

She methodically tills the dirt in parallel furrows, lagging behind the natives but sensing their respect for her efforts. With time and practice, she will learn the secrets of their exceptional produce, so that those traditions can be mechanised and manufactured. _It is love, Overliege Sinya,_ Topas assured her repeatedly. _Love for our land._ She'd chuckled at the idea of mass-producing love. Although, looking back at the humanoids systematically churning and enriching the soil, it is indeed an attachment, she decides.

 

_Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength._

 

 _Byt!_ Craning her neck skyward, Sinya shields her eyes from the sunlight and tries to discern her twin brother's hybrid shuttle from the others, but he is still too far away. Instead, the sky is speckled with TIE-fighters – scout ships, in case the Capital requires an emergency airborne defence again. Undeterred, she offers Topas the handle of her pitchfork and smiles graciously. “Thank you, my liege. I shall return before sundown.”

 

The Ukian bows his bald head. “Until then, m’lady.”

 

Sinya turns away and breaks into an excited run, leaping astride her hovering T-44. Bouncing in the air under her weight, with a high-pitched whine the speeder accelerates and soars away from the field. She traverses expansive meadows of blue-green grass, rough and shaggy like uncombed hair, manoeuvring between herds of grazing cattle, streaking at full throttle toward the shuttle landing facility west of Sashasa.

 

 

~

 

 

By the time she arrives, the Chimera has already made planetfall. Two of her indentured servants are the first to disembark, the third no doubt still running post-flight checks; they hurry toward her, waving exuberantly while she dismounts her landspeeder. Grinning, she raises the tip of her right lek in return. The liveried slaves are followed by another, shorter figure, emaciated and clad in an ill-fitting brown tunic and robe, a shock of curly black hair atop its head. Its cobalt-blue eyes are piercing, even from a distance.

 

Sinya’s heart leaps into her throat in recognition.

 

 _Emperor's black bones… he’s kriffing_ done _it._

 

It can’t be. It’s _her._

 

Only… it isn’t.

 

She was mistaken. Her initial floored shock recedes as she approaches Byt’s passengers on foot. This refugee is very like Kira – his facial features could be a mirror image, were he not so raw-boned – but first impressions are deceiving. His angular jaw overhangs a protuberant Adam’s apple and his comically large ears protrude like thermajug handles; he has been meticulously groomed recently, she notes, probably by her conscientious underlings. A child with similar features has almost entirely concealed himself within the man’s flowing robes.

 

The two bondservants simultaneously drop to one knee before her on the duracrete platform and bow their heads.

 

“Jacen,” she greets warmly. “Baze. _Waba jafasua fuji ji awadna, ma sareen._ ”

 

“And with you, my Overliege,” they reply in perfect synchronicity.

 

“Arise.”

 

Baze takes a step forward. “You must forgive our prisoners, m’lady,” he intones furtively. “We suspect they are not familiar with the Twi’lek species.”

 

Sinya frowns. “But… Byt?”

 

“They did not respond favourably to your brother, I’m afraid,” he continues. The two refugees are already standing motionlessly beyond the cargo ramp of Byt’s shuttle and eyeing her with suspicion, the boy’s face barely peeking out from behind his father. “My lord has a… commanding presence.”

 

She can only imagine her twin’s reaction to _that._ Kira had been unhesistatingly accepting of their unfamiliar appearance when she arrived at the Temple, but she was just a youngling then, too innocent to have any ingrained prejudices… and in the company of a Kel Dor, a Keshiri, a Zabrak and a Cerean, two Twi’leks were hardly even noteworthy. Considering the diverse assortment of alien natives and refugees populating Ukio, these two will have a lot more than a pair of exotic head-tailed humanoids to become accustomed to.

 

“Welcome, friends,” she calls to them, offering her upturned palms. “Welcome to your new home.”

 

The man regards her warily, wrapping a protective arm around his son.

 

“My slaves will do whatever they can to make you comfortable.”

 

Sinya takes a tentative step toward them, then another, and another. Their eyes dart apprehensively to her servants, but they stand their ground.

 

“ _Orok nay grai?_ ” questions the man, his voice quavering.

 

Her lips curve into a wholehearted smile and she extends one olive-green hand in the hope that he will take it. “Sinya Olypo,” she replies affably. “Do you speak Basic,” - briefly dipping into his thoughts, she searches for a name - “Kit?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

Her smile widens. “I knew your sister,” she offers. “No, more than that. She was my closest friend. _Numa_ Kira.” Painstakingly delicate, she casts a soft image of her former fellow padawan into Kit’s mind.

 

“You’re a Jedi,” he replies, understanding and somewhat in awe, clasping her offered palm now with both hands. His fingers are alarmingly bony, she notes with consternation. But he’s here now, in the land of plenty, a new life for him and his son.

 

Sinya closes her arachnoid fingers around his, engulfing his hands completely, and envisions sunshine, rolling hills, fields rich with dried grains and orchards ripe for the harvest, praying that some fragment permeates his Force-insensitive psyche. Education for his son; apothecaries and medical care; shelter and clean water and food in glorious abundance. Perhaps it works; an expression like hope skitters across his weatherworn face.

 

“Something like that, Kit. Welcome.” She clasps his shoulder and, turning, gestures for them to follow her two servants. Kit complies without argument, his son trailing behind, and Sinya continues on toward the starcraft.

 

Her brother has hung back and lurks within the cargo hold of his shuttle among the empty supply crates, concealed in shadow. Tendrils of desolation and remorse pollute his strong presence in the Force, like a menacing stormcloud. His bleak miasma almost repels her as she ascends the boarding ramp to stand before him.

 

“ _Ma freetaa nerra,_ ” she warbles childishly, holding out her arms, wanting to lift his mood.

 

He doesn’t speak, nor reach for her. _Ma kluub alema,_ he replies morosely. _I’m returning to Fralideja._

 

_No, you’re not. You’re staying here with me, Byt._

 

The dark Twi’lek shakes his head.

 

 _I like my new slaves. Thank you,_ she adds.

 

 _Your concept of slavery is amiss, numa._ Byt pulls his robe tighter around his body. He is slouching, lest his lekku grate against the ceiling of the cargo hold, observing the slaves from the shadows as they disappear into the distance.

 

“Does it matter? Come out into the sunlight where I can see you,” Sinya implores aloud.

 

Her twin sighs. Save for the eerie glow of his incandescent yellow eyes beneath the hood of his cloak, she cannot make out his features. _I must return to the Sith Temple._ His aura in the Force trembles a little.

 

_Stay here a while, nerra. Work the land with me. It’s good for the soul._

 

Byt doesn’t reply, but she can sense his scornful derision at the mention of his soul.

 

“You are not so corrupt as you think,” she argues gently, wrinkling her nose. “Those two – the man and his boy – they would have perished, if not for you. You’re their guardian angel. Besides, one hundred thousand credits would afford you at least… three more supply runs?”

 

_You are overly generous, numa. But Mesa Outpost holds no meaning for me now. They are all dead, or near dead. I belong at the Temple._

 

Sinya reaches out, twining her fingers comfortingly around his fisted azure hand. He is picturing his young lover’s family – her haggard, wrinkled mother, her five other older brothers and one younger sister, all cast from the same mould… their staunch refusal to join a disfigured, ungodly cacodemon with its promises of sanctuary and safety. They had never known him for who he was. And beyond that, a familiar infinite mental void that threatens to swallow her whole, should she pry any further, and the Sith code chanted over and over.

 

“I was too late.” His deep voice falters.

 

Through her touch, Byt's sorrow floods through her as though it were her own; a lone tear trickles down her cheek. “ _Freykaa nerra,_ ” she whispers, throwing her arms around her brother’s shoulders, pulling his stiff, inwardly-curled body to hers in a fierce embrace. Byt cringes instinctively – he is never openly affectionate, not any more, but she clings to him regardless.

 

After several beats, she feels his robotic arm sliding around her waist, then his flesh-and-blood hand at the nape of her neck, pleasantly brushing against the skin of her lekku.

 

“I love you,” she mumbles, the words muffled against his shoulder. “Stay with me, Byt, even if only for a few days. The living Force is so powerful here. We can spar and seed the fields and pray together… I’ll erase the boy’s memory for you, if you want?”

 

He holds her in silence.

 

Then, _I love you, too._

 

 

_~_

 

 

Rain pelts down onto the battlefield in crazy, chaotic drops, the wind whipping it in wild vortices one moment and diagonal sheets the next. Viscous mud sucks at their sabatons as the seven masked Knights of Ren curse through sludge in pitch-darkness, lumbering away from their felled victims. Their slaughter was quick, methodical and brutal. Incentivized by battle, the Knights are impatient now, hungry for their next kill. Master Snoke permitted only Kylo to wield a lightsaber for this mission, the others allotted customised energy weapons. It is something of a relief; he has sensed fleeting notions of disloyalty from them, though none would ever dare challenge him in combat.

 

Just one opponent remains. An armoured warrior in a disc-shaped helmet. This arrogant fool already knows his fate, Kylo understands, but he hollers out one final venturous battle cry and charges the group nonetheless. The Knights watch with sadistic amusement as their leader seizes their last adversary’s neck and skewers him through the torso with the full force of his blade, raindrops crackling and sizzling from its sparking length protruding from his back. Kylo anchors the soldier against his own body as if in an embrace, feeling the life drain out of him, until he slumps and goes limp. Their coveted prize – a trove of Sith artefacts, stolen and hoarded – awaits them now, undefended. Snoke will be pleased, he anticipates, yanking his blade out viciously and letting the dead weight collapse face-down into the muck.

 

Without warning, the Force seems to invert on itself in a wormhole and she is _there,_ corporialised from nothing: the desert girl who he will convince himself in years to come was a hallucination. Her raw strength blazes in the Force like a radiant star, boldly humming.

 

 _Extraordinary_ , Kylo thinks, and _exquisite_ , before he can rein in his feelings.

 

She has no place in this story. The girl stares straight at him, puzzled but unafraid, and even though his weapon is ablaze and she is unarmed, he freezes to the spot. Kluub and Al-Jinn, flanking him with chainsaw pikes held aloft, instinctively halt. He senses their fluster, unable to perceive any obstacle between them and their plunder.

 

One scene melts into another. He is lying helplessly in the snow, a prominent burn slashed into his face and chest, pain searing through his side where the bowcaster bolt slammed into him. The son of darkness; mortally wounded by a Wookiee, a renegade Stormtrooper and a slip of a girl who had never before brandished a lightsaber. That _same_ girl. And she’s more powerful than Kylo already, he registered with something akin to awe, when his grandfather’s lightsaber dislodged itself from the snowpack and hurtled past his waiting palm into hers, where she had summoned it.

 

He tries to sit up, to track his subjugator pacing before him with her stolen blade poised for a killing blow. The dark side compels her to destroy him; he can see it in her eyes, glittering with unbridled hatred, the tight set of her jaw, her teeth bared in a snarl.

 

Before she can strike, a heavy groundquake unbalances her and throws him flat on his back again. It intensifies quickly, rumbling through Starkiller’s core until the trees surrounding them groan, bricks of sleet hailing from their defoliated branches. When the planet’s crust suddenly splits open between them, it sucks everything into its gaping void: snow, soil, trees, _everything._ Kylo's maimed body will be next. His injuries are too grave for any hope of escape; he can only rock in place among flurries of white powder and whistling wind, feeling all strength seep away and the world imploding beneath him. Knowing. _This is how I die._

 

Starkiller Base dissipates into a nebulous haze and he’s back in his sleeping chamber, somewhere between wakefulness and dreaming. It’s cold. Bitterly cold. Is he still prostrated in the snow? The sleeping figure curled up against his chest is no longer there, and his fingers search the silken bedsheets for the place still warm from her body.

 

The command shuttle judders, jerking him fully awake. His outstretched arm lies across the empty half of his sleeper, where he was pawing pitifully at the mattress just moments ago, reaching out for some ephemeral dream. He rises to sit, black shimmersilk sliding away from his bare chest, and concentrates on the ship’s movements - trying to reorient himself in reality. It lurches once more, then stabilises; the smooth hum of well-oiled engines familiar, oddly soothing. Less than ten standard hours until they reach his flagship, he calculates. His hand flits to his left flank, then to his cheek, seeking reassurance that the near-fatal wounds of fast-evaporating nightmares have healed, nothing but memories etched into his flesh.

 

The past two days have been overwhelmingly busy and wretchedly empty, both at once.

 

Bothawui has been besieged by Stormtroopers, beginning with Mesa Outpost and travelling from village to village, bolstering the libertarian army and laying waste to the Bothan rebels. Tattooine will be next, then Ryloth, then hundreds more. All variations on a theme; years of crime and corruption which the First Order has permitted to operate unchecked, either in return for bribery, or expecting planetary takeover once the situation became so dire that their governing senators had no choice but to submit.

 

The Finalizer has triangulated and vaporised the Zann Consortium’s base on Kuat. Having salvaged datapods among the space junk that used to be Starkiller Base, the cartel’s leader has already threatened attacks on Geonosian Industries and the Star Forge, should the First Order initiate any further strikes. Security forces at both locations have trebled. Kylo has every vessel in his fleet scouring their sectors for the cartel’s identification transponders, with orders to fire on sight. The Consortium’s slave trade on Sullust and Dac will be short-lived.

 

The current supply runs need expansion and rerouting – abolishing piracy will leave hundreds of remote communities all over the galaxy bereft of food and fresh water. The Manda Merchant Route now encompasses every planet in the Mid Rim, including three not under the Order's rule.

 

With their numbers devastated, Crimson Dawn is recruiting in almost every backwater cantina in the Outer Rim. Commander Weel’s spies report that they have already flooded the black market with stolen clearance codes and cloaking devices specifically designed to evade the First Order’s radars. All thirty battlecruisers' codes are now rehashed every ten standard hours.

 

The Hutts will be a problem. For generations, they have dominated the galaxy’s criminal underworld, overseeing the slave trade, spice smuggling and prostitution in Hutt space. With a sizeable army themselves, they have conquered and enslaved entire planets. Ryloth's native Twi’lek population has been subjected to years of suppression and exploitation at the hands of the Hutts, their women sold throughout the galaxy to the highest bidders as chattel slaves, exotic dancers and concubines.

 

The list is endless. They are everywhere; a vile infestation. The First Order has been the enemy of peace and justice for too long, rather than its guardian.

 

It sickens Kylo, what Snoke allowed his galaxy to become… and what he himself ignorantly permitted to continue.

 

Yesterday, he executed two of the most notorious Hutts: Sutha, souteneur of female Twi’leks, and Arok, a infamous glitterstim trafficker; naming each first and tallying their plethora of heinous crimes as a eulogy, like Kopecz had. Swift and clean, surrounded by Stormtroopers holding them and their guards at gunpoint, and broadcast across the HoloNet as a warning to the remainder of their organisation: surrender, or die. He'd fought through an army of guards just to get to them. All slaves liberated within the coming days, if they do not wish to stay, will be transported to Nar Kanji - the sole planet in Hutt Space whose human colonists drove their oppressors out. The ‘troopers remained on Nal Hutta, swarming the Capital. The Supreme Leader returned to his command shuttle alone, trudging dolefully like a man headed to his own execution, to sleep through the return journey to the Finalizer.

 

Nothing awaited him in his sleeper but insomnia, haunting echoes of the past, and endless nightmares.

 

Nothing from _her_.

 

At night, when he shuts his eyes, it's her face he sees. And every kriffing time he tries to sleep now, his masochistic mind has him waking to the memory of her warm body enfolded in his arms, and his stomach feels leaden at the awful realisation that she isn’t there… and never will be.

 

Where it had sparked and pulsated like a living thing two standard days ago, the crimson thread between them is already beginning to atrophy, like an unused muscle. Thinning. During their waking hours, Rey blocks him out with determined focus; his only chance now to creep through is when her mind is loose and pliant with sleep. Just as he had secretly studied her for a full solar cycle, clinging to his last vestige of sanity as self-appointed galactic ruler.

 

It makes him feel like a lecherous old man, watching her caught in the gentle grip of slumber - always silent, no longer reaching to touch.

 

Rey is maybe ten solar cycles his junior and he’d tried to teach her how to kiss… for his own selfish pleasure, so easily distracted by carnality when she only wanted help deciphering the Sacred Texts. He would have gone further – much, _much_ further – if she had allowed it. The incredible triumph of reaching that moment - experiencing _Rey’s_ desire for _him_ \- was electrifying.

 

It wasn’t love.

 

He’s incapable of love, and undeserving of another’s.

 

It was a deplorable act, unbarricading his mind that she might share in his lust. He’d projected images of himself pleasuring her – in place of forgettable lovers past – but she had searched deeper, and perceived much more. She'd seen it all. Depravity. Shame. Self-loathing. Rage and bloodlust. Of course she had seen him, really _seen_ him for the abomination he is, and fled.

 

 _Murderous snake_ , Rey sniped at him once. _Monster_.

 

She’ll never see him as anything else.

 

Too distraught to sleep, Kylo listlessly watches the shining thread now, half-naked with his back to the headboard, silken sheets askew and tangled between his thighs. It’s perilously fragile, vibrating and stilling, vibrating then stilling in a steady rhythm. Not with their shared heartbeat, but as though it were being tugged from one end. A worried glance about his chamber assures him that Rey hasn't somehow inadvertently reopened the bond; even her Force-signature is indiscernible.

 

Unable to stifle his curiosity, he reaches for it, hesitant and slow.

 

He doesn’t know what he expected to discover, but is relieved to find her asleep at the other end. Wherever she is, their sleep cycles seem to be synchronised. It has always been a comfort, sharing her space, listening to her breathe, basking in her steady light. Savouring the vibrant, lush energy that always lingers in the air when he reluctantly leaves her.

 

From the silver-white glow cast across her skin and the sleep-cocoon tucked loosely around her body, he guesses she is outdoors under moonlight – even with the illusion of having her stretched across the foot of his sleeper. Her loose hair is a mess, tangled and strewn across the pillow, sticking to her brow with a thin sheen of perspiration.

 

She’s breathtakingly beautiful. An angel. He knows every freckle scattered across her nose and cheeks. Her lissom body - hard striated muscle in some parts, soft curves in others. That scar over her deltoid shaped like two hands clasping, from the day they fought back-to-back, unstoppable together. The day that he'd offered her everything. The day she shattered his lightsaber and broke his heart. There’s something intangible about simply being with her... lust, warring with something far deeper.

 

Nothing has really changed but the chamber is suddenly quieter, save for the tiny noises she makes – little sighs, whimpering softly, and he can feel her tiny movements as she wriggles on his mattress.

 

Nightmares, then. Kylo has given her a great many, he acknowledges miserably. When he last peered into the murky morass of her dreams she was howling in agony, hauled into the air by invisible claws in Snoke’s throne room and twisted until her spine threatened to snap. She moans softly, writhing on his sheets, her face and bare shoulders ghostly pale in the ambient light.

 

Strange now, that she is sleeping on her back – usually she prefers one side, hands tucked underneath her cheek as if in prayer, huddled into a ball – an intimate detail that he knows well and cherishes from so many nights of observation. And she is always fully clothed, even when her sleeping attire is grossly oversized, frayed or torn – something scavenged or stolen. If she were really here he would offer her nothing but luxury, and keep her warm and safe every night. Her shoulders shake a little and her breathing speeds up, head rocking from side to side on the pillow, eyes tightly shut.

 

Kylo takes no pleasure in watching her suffer through endless night terrors. If he could, he would wrap himself securely around her back and stand with her through them… or banish them, the way she had silenced his the night they grieved together. Nor will he wake her now. The idea that she might become aware of these clandestine visits – that her defences have been penetrated so soon - jangles his nerves. What might she think, if she knew? Rey’s mind is weakly shielded, but he can almost see inside if he _pushes_ … her thoughts are faint and trembling, barely stitched together.

 

Dipping his head shamefully, he visualises severing the thread, leaving her in peace.

 

A feral noise suddenly escapes her throat – a mumbled word that _couldn’t_ have been his name – and he hesitates. The muted moonlight is just enough to see her tongue flick out and run over her lips, her left hand slowly sliding up from underneath the cover, twining into the soft waves of her hair and fisting tightly.

 

She vocalises another strangled moan then bites down on her lower lip. Her left collarbone is faintly discoloured where he sank his teeth into her creamy skin and sucked bruises into it… eliciting the same kind of soft, keening sigh she is making now. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to do that to her again. For a moment, her spine seems to arch off his mattress, dragging the edge of her sleep-cocoon further down her chest and unveiling her small breasts – flawless, teardrop-shaped and lying flat against her ribcage, pale beside her tanned arms. They would fit perfectly in his palms... or in his mouth.

 

His heart skips a beat.

 

Her unwitting nakedness gives him a wicked thrill. Wetting his own lips, he imagines how those dark, erect nipples would feel between them. They rise and fall with her laboured panting. Beneath the cover, he can faintly make out the frenzied movements of her other hand between her legs.

 

_Ah._

 

Not a nightmare.

 

Heat rushes to his cheeks, burning the tips of his ears beet-red. In all the nights he sought her out through the Force, he never imagined she might be doing... _this._ His cock nudges the inside of his sleeping pants, ears straining to hear every filthy, forbidden sound she is making. Rey remains somehow oblivious to his rapt attention, too caught up in her own ministrations.

 

 _Lecherous. Old. Man,_ his conscience screams. This beautiful, sensual creature is not here for his voyeuristic pleasure and he has no right to be doing this, any of this. He reaches again to terminate the connection.

 

“ _Ben_ ,” she murmurs in a shaky voice.

 

She doesn’t know he’s broken through.

 

All at once, the world seems to stop. His breath catches sharply, pulse hammering behind his ribcage. Biting the inside of his cheek to keep quiet, Kylo goes deathly still, trying not to breathe. If she registers his presence now, she will summon Pla Ren’s lightsaber and run him through on the spot, he has no doubt. He dares not probe her thoughts too much lest she sense him inside, studying her with single-minded focus.

 

But she’s still here, writhing in his shimmersilk sheets, touching herself – and he can’t look away. Her all-human body is irresistible like this. Mesmerising. He wants to see, to taste, to feel for himself, a primal need slithering beneath the surface.

 

Grinding his teeth, hands balled into fists to keep himself from touching her, he tries in vain to ignore his growing erection. Maintaining any semblance of self-control seems impossible. The mound below her belly moves faster. Little pulses run though her every time she flicks her fingers with rougher, more erratic strokes. Her thighs are starting to quiver, sweat-slicked body tensing up.

 

“B– Ben...” His name comes out broken and quiet, like a soft plea. It makes his mouth water.

 

All at once she begins to breathe fast and shallow, her moans deeper, more urgent. Her hips buck into her concealed hand, the other clenched firmly in her hair, tugging hard just as he had when was _teaching_ her…

 

For an instant, Kylo forgets to be careful. The connection splits wide open and he sees _everything_. Exhilarating new sensations; the delicious slide of his tongue, large hands skimming the lines of her back, the painful pleasure of his teeth in her skin. The way she’d discovered him in the ‘fresher – his huge, powerfully-built form, rivulets of hot water tracing long lines of sinew and muscle, her fingers itching to touch. At Niima Outpost, a handful of dirty holovids she had unearthed and played out of innocent curiosity, left behind in officers’ quarters of long-abandoned battlecruisers. Oh yes, she knows about sex – something that held no place in the dispiriting existence of a desert scavenger, that never held her interest until…

 

And his fingers, so much longer and thicker than hers. He'd know _exactly_ what to do. How she has imagined those fingers pleasuring her as she touches herself now, slick with her arousal. Ever since Crait, in private moments, tucked away from prying eyes. But these past weeks, everything has changed. Intensified. When he treated her wound, his unexpected gentleness… when she crawled into his sleeper and woke to his erection rubbing against her lower back… when he gave her a taste of what it feels like to be fucked with reckless abandon, her insides fluttering while his cock pulsed deep inside.

 

 _Run for your life, save yourself_ , her intuition urges, rattled with grisly images of all those he has slain even as her traitorous body still craves him. Kylo instigated her abilities in the Force… what else has he awakened in her?

 

With a jolt, her trembling figure becomes rigid, her back bowing off his sheets. When her orgasm crashes over her, she cries out, savage and fragmented. No contented hum. Nothing ladylike. This is _Rey._

 

He wants this woman beyond reason. Hard and fast, right now. To be her first – her last – her only. To make her scream and come apart under him, to break her and claim her as his own.

 

 _Bakura Sector,_ his subconscious whispers. _Blazing like a homing beacon. Look closer._

 

He needs to end this. Immediately. Heat is pooling below his gut, a building ache demanding relief. All of his skin feels too hot and too tight. Kylo grunts in frustration – the guttural sound issuing from his throat before he can swallow it.

 

_Kriff, oh kriff, end it now, you idiot_

 

Rey’s big hazel eyes fly open, glassy with pleasure. She’s silent and unmoving, listening cautiously all of a sudden.

 

Kylo cannot sever the bond quickly enough.

 

Alone in his sleeper, his mind scrabbles to process what just happened – what he _saw_ – even as his hand slides beneath the waistband of his sleeping pants to palm his swollen, straining cock, frantic now for release. _This_ was no dream. Fortifying his mental barricades to shut her out – not that she would ever attempt to trace the thread back to him - he collapses sideways onto his mattress, awash with relief.

 

 

~

 

 

He roars her name into his pillow when he comes.

 

 _Frack,_ he needs her here. Anything. _Anything,_ to have her here.

 

 

~

 

 

Blessed be to Plagueis the Wise, Dathka Graush, XoXaan, the spirits above and below. To the Sith’ari, his fallen brethren and their forefathers in the darkness. Blessed be to those in the living realm and those who have crossed over into the Netherworld of the Force. The Sith’ari shall raise the Sith from the dead and make them stronger than before.

 

Broad meadows and fertile crop fields are a highly unorthodox setting for such endeavours - a far cry from the boundless, roiling sea of lava that is Mustafar. Nevertheless, his pursuit itself is without precedent – manifesting a human being from thin air is vastly different from restoring life to a freshly-dead corpse. If Kopecz Ren wishes to complete his magnum opus, these beauteous environs might be his greatest opportunity for success.

 

He longs for the safety and sanctity of the Sith temple. His qabbrat. The edifice was designed to focus the power of the malignant side of the Force, to be harnessed and manipulated. The ritual invariably weakens its mage, but on Mustafar – all but uninhabited now – should he emerge from prayer with all his strength siphoned, life energy ebbed away with the incantation, no one shall bear witness to his frailty nor take advantage while he recuperates.

 

In eight solar cycles of devout study and prayer, he has not once met with success. Every death he oversees nourishes and empowers him, and there have been no shortage of those over the years – yet never enough. But life energy abounds in Sashasa. The living Force is strong here indeed, like a cosmic power cell, waiting to be drained.

 

Kopecz has little concern for the natural order of the universe; the majority of its inhabitants lead meaningless, self-centred lives from inception to burial. Consume and reproduce, so their spawn may consume and reproduce. The order of the universe belongs to the Sith. To _him._ He harbours no aspiration of rulership over this foredoomed galaxy. May they all dig their own graves. He could count on his one hand the number of souls for whom he cares, and he would sacrifice everything for one, and one only.

 

So when Sinya insisted that he stay, he resignedly conceded.

 

Kneeling in a field of skycorn ripe for the harvest, one rangy figure hidden amongst the towering crop, he folds his hands and recites a chant that has become so habitual now, he probably murmurs it even in sleep.

 

_Lost and unable to find my way_

_Hear my plea, help me find_

_Nwûl, love, darkness,_

_My freykaa, lost from sight_

_Find your way back to me_

_So I may be with you again, shining and bright_

_Wo become yun._

 

Something is innately different about Ukio – rich with unharnessed power, life flourishing and thriving everywhere. He notices it immediately, watching the surrounding shafts of skycorn shrivel and turn brown through a timid, fluttering veil of hope. The Force transforms him into a vessel full to bursting; it is so intense here, he fears he might disappear into it. Darth Plagueis’s pyramidal holocron, laying in the soil by his knees, throbs with scarlet light like a living organ. The spell inscribed on its underside is as natural to Kopecz now as breathing.

 

Unclasping his spindly fingers from mechanical ones, the cloaked Twi’lek begins an intricate sequence of hand gestures he knows instinctually; years of daily practice has the rite imprinted irrevocably into his memory. His deep basso drops a further octave as he chants in the ancient Sith tongue, the divine passage of _Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut_ , over and over.

 

_Sith’ari, the spirit who commands the day,_

_If I indeed have ever spent my nights_

_Together with the sun which spins around_

_Thy warmth is turning back_

_I implore thee:_

_If I can rely safely on the appearing of muscle maggots_

_The appearing of Diptera maggots_

_The appearing of gravel-maggots summoned by sunbeam,_

_Then may her ready-to-blunder head_

_Find support for her legs_

_Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut, ja'ak,_

_For death is but a facade._

 

 

_~_

 

 

By twilight, exhaustion has overcome him. The last of the Sith sorcerers is no stranger to failure. Physically drained, he scarcely registers the rolling thunderclouds coalescing in the sky above, or the sprawling field of dried-out, wilted skycorn sheaves in which he stands.

 

But Kopecz Ren is nary dispirited, for this time, he felt an anomaly in the Force. A blurring between realms. For one heart-stopping second, the atmosphere rippled like pebbles tossed into a pond and at its centre, one shining, cobalt-blue eye peered back at him amongst rows upon rows of withered stalks. Not a Force illusion; a genuine outline, solid and clear. Forgetting himself, his mouth had fallen agog and he’d let out a loud whoop of exultation – disrupting the delicate balance of energy, breaking his mage’s trance. Of course, it had evaporated straight away.

 

A modicum of self-discipline next time, he resolves, but here on Ukio he shall remain – for now - to fully harness its potential. There will be ample opportunity to try again tomorrow.

 

And tomorrow.

 

And tomorrow.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Bothan translations:**  
>  _Orok nay grai?_ = Who are you?
> 
>  **Twi'leki/Ryl translations:**  
>  _Nerra_ = brother  
>  _Numa_ = sister  
>  _Waba jafasua fuji ji awadna, ma sareen_ = May the Force be with you, my dear  
>  _Ma freetaa_ = my brave  
>  _Ma kluub alema_ = my tranquil protector  
>  _Freykaa_ = beloved
> 
> **Sith language translations: ******  
>  _Nwûl_ = peace  
>  _Wo_ = one  
>  _Yun_ = two  
>  _Qabbrat_ = meditation chamber  
>  _Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut_ = The reanimated dead  
>  _Ja'ak_ = freedom
> 
> Incantation inspired by Tubyaku Kosterkin's séance (1921-1989)


	23. Kf1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels him bristle, leather gloves creaking as he clenches and unclenches his fists.
> 
> “I want to see you in person. For real.” All of the warmth drains from his voice. “Don’t make me have to use the Force to find you. I _will_ find you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical inspiration for this chapter: [Jaymes Young - Moondust](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGhes-VIC94=)

 

 

He’s doing it again.

  


Two straight days of unseasonal electrical storms already have the Ukians flustered: the heavy precipitation will spoil the drying wrontin and maize crops, not to mention creating the perfect environment for grain flies to breed to plague proportions. They have already lost an entire hectare of skycorn – wilted and ruined, the soil desiccated – along with half an orchard of domrai trees and meiloorun vines. All in perfect circles. One side of its circumference is ripe and brilliant green, the other reduced to ash.

  


Then, there’s the cattle.

  


Those livestock grazing at the outskirts of the plantation refuse to be herded, and when they are, have stopped giving milk. The slaves report they’re not eating, only chewing cud – even when relocated to greener pastures – and won't touch their water troughs. It’s as if they’ve lost their will to live.

  


Dismounting her landspeeder, Sinya eyes her brother with trepidation. She would have parked closer, but the air around him for thirty paces in every direction is rippling and distorted, like a misshapen glass dome. Approaching the spectral phenomenon, she was struck by the bizarre image of her T-44 crashing into its perimeter and shattering, or being swallowed up in an interdimensional rift.

  


There's a sharply-defined curve cutting the meadow, where lush greenery morphs into weird clumps of hay that crumble beneath her soles. Not like dried grass at all. The instant she steps across the border, the atmosphere itself seems to transmute; it feels oddly viscous and devoid of oxygen, like trying to swim through honey, weightless and gasping for breath. The temperature plunges. Refocusing on the living Force, she draws on it for strength and paces laboriously towards him.

  


_Give it time,_ she tells herself. _Lessu wasn’t built in a day._

  


This has progressed beyond grief, beyond anything remotely rational, and has consumed his entire existence. Byt needs to let go.

  


One day soon, she will open his eyes to the paradise of Ukio, make him treasure this melting-pot of resettled refugees from all over the galaxy the way she does. Thousands of creatures, a myriad of cultures and languages and customs, united by one thing: hope. Byt is no farmhand – neither was she, before her onetime Master consigned her to the Abrion Sector - but there’s a wonderful simplicity to planting a seed, nurturing it, watching it flourish and bear fruit. Something she desperately wants him to experience for himself.

  


“ _Chuba_ , Byt,” she begins tentatively, her voice thin and tight.

  


Ignoring her, her twin chants rhythmically in ancient Sith, hands clasped, eyelids fluttering. The pitch of his voice is abnormally low. While she loves him unconditionally, with all of his little foibles and eccentricities – witnessing him like this is unnerving.

  


“ _Nerra?”_

  


His bloodshot eyes crack open a notch.

  


“Byt… _ma sareen_ …” She gulps, unsure whether it’s the syrupy atmosphere or her nervousness at his proximity that’s making it hard to breathe. It feels as though _she_ is the trespasser on _his_ territory. “ _Chini, wachamio_.”

  


He pauses, his gaze falling to the Sith holocron between his knees. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  


“It’s _my_ crinking _planet_.”

  


“ _Tesa men yopatu ji youba stupache,_ Sinya.”

  


He hasn’t tried this kind of nonsense since they were younglings. “Your old Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me, remember?” She taps one olive-green finger to her forehead, lekku drumming against her shoulder blades in exasperation. “Besides, who else would I be out looking for?”

  


He’s distracted. Whatever unholy miasma he manifested is beginning to dissipate, thank the stars. The timbre of his voice rises an octave, back to its familiar basso.

  


“Leave me be.”

  


“ _Wachamio, nerra,_ ” she offers again, gentler this time. “You’re exhausted; I can feel it. If you define yourself by the power to give and take life, the desire to bend the will of the Force…then you have nothing.”

  


Grumbling under his breath, Byt untwines his fingers, pockets the engraved artefact, then grudgingly rises to his haunches. He’s off-balance and unnaturally stiff, as if every movement sends pain coursing through his system. He accepts her offered hand for assistance, but it’s still not enough to stand up on his own.

  


“Did it work?” she asks, even though the answer is obvious.

  


“No.”

  


“Have you ever considered that you might not be powerful enough on your own?”

  


The look he shoots back is so dismal, so utterly hopeless, that she wishes she could rescind her words. Crouching, Sinya grips him securely underneath his armpits and heaves his torso upward. He’s heavy – and weak, his whole body shaking as he gives her almost all of his weight. With a strained grunt, she lifts him to his feet. Judging by his current frailty, she’ll be just about carrying him to the T-44, she anticipates.

  


After several seconds tottering together, locked in a clumsy embrace, she realises Byt is at glowering at her. “This meadow is insufficient,” he accuses tonelessly.

  


Sinya frowns. “Insufficient? We’re supposed to be cultivating the land, not killing it.”

  


“I shall bring forth new life.” His voice has a gravelly, frayed quality that comes with age, like a century-old grandsire.

  


“At what cost? You can barely stand. Look around you, Darth Cranky.”

  


He weathers her gentle rebuke, scanning their surrounds as if noticing them for the first time. As if he hadn’t hiked five klicks from the barracks this morning, bowed down in prayer and whiled away his hours sapping midi-chlorians from the land in an ever-expanding radius. A circle of death, with her twin brother at its centre.

  


“The Supreme Leader wants the Abrion Sector to double its output,” she protests. “We’re supplying the entire Mid Rim as of today, and soon, most of Hutt Space as well, by the sounds of it. Then probably half the Western Reaches. I’m going to outsource some of the workload – send a contingent of Ukian farmers to teach the natives off-world how to cultivate their own land when the furore dies down, but...”

  


Byt’s expression sharpens. “The Mid Rim?”

  


“Yes, including Bothawui.” Letting out a resigned sigh, she tries to balance with him in tow. They’ll need sufficient crops to supply most of the damn galaxy, and _that’s_ all he hears. Always so narrowly focused, ready to sell his soul for his beloved at the expense of billions. Eight solar cycles of unending failure has somehow only cemented his dedication. “But I’ll have no chance if you keep doing -” she gestures over the shrivelled grass - “ _this,_ Byt.”

  


“Kopecz,” he corrects tersely.

  


“Ugh. Very well, _Kopecz._ What’s in a name?”

  


His glazed eyes flit impassively across the meadow, then back to hers. “Help me, then.” Still too weak to support his own bodyweight, his hands dig heavily into her arms.

  


It’s only the second time in their thirty-eight solar cycles she’s supported him, instead of the other way around; the first time, he’d been falling-down drunk on Corellian whiskey – they’d all overindulged, especially Ben - when they should have been picking up supply crates for Master Skywalker.

  


“I can’t help you,” she replies. “Not here. Our produce goes out to the whole galaxy… and… you can't keep doing this here. You need to stop.”

  


Spindly fingers clench around her bicep. “I’ll _never_ stop,” he rasps. He lets the words hang in the air, like a challenge.

  


“Nor should you, _nerra._ ” Lifting his flesh-and-blood arm, she loops it around her shoulders, winding her own across his waist for support. “I loved her, too. But… not here. Please.”

  


“Then I shall leave.”

  


Arm in arm, they shamble back to her hovering landspeeder. Each step is an effort. Beneath the robes, his body feels cadaverously thin, all skin and bones. These fanatical rituals of his are killing him – and everything in his vicinity. The Byt she remembers was a robust picture of health; a boisterous, self-confident man who never doubted his fellow padawans, tirelessly encouraging them all in their moments of self-distrust. Their tower of strength. She would like to give him that vitality and lust for life again, to offer him a place at her side, here in paradise. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

  


He’s a lugubrious old soul, crotchety and obsessive, and he never smiles any more, but she loves him anyway. Love is many things, none of them logical.

  


Byt gives her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. He’s tracking her thoughts. He always has.

  


“Please don’t leave,” she beseeches. “Spend some time with the people here. Kit and his son, at least. They’ll get used to you – I swear it. They deserve to know the person who changed their lives. Help us with the summer harvest. Get some sunshine.” She studiously ignores the thunderclouds gathered overhead, blotting out the afternoon sunrays. “Maybe then, we’ll travel further afield together? Somewhere there’s nothing… uh, _living_ … for us to deplete, where we can pray to our hearts' content.”

  


“...We?” he echoes meekly.

  


Sinya draws him in tighter.

  


“Yes. _We._ ”

  


“Your light shines too brightly to sully it with Sith sorcery, _numa_.”

  


She snorts. “I didn’t ask for that sick parasite to assign me to paradise. And I’m hardly a Jedi.”

  


“You are one of the most powerful beings in the light side of the Force I have ever known.” Byt stumbles in the loose sand and almost pitches forward, but she is quick to catch him.

  


“ _One_ of?” She stifles a smirk. Never will she be on par with Skywalker, nor ever aspire to be. The Jedi Order is just that: an archaic religion, driven into extinction by its own irrelevance. A rulebook to govern the lives of anyone attuned to the Force, make every padawan a mirror-image of their predecessors. She wants no part in it.

  


“There is another,” he says sombrely. “As powerful as Kylo Ren, if not more so, in the Outer Rim… have you not seen it?”

  


Sinya shakes her head. She had long ago given up reaching out to the universe during meditation, too disconsolate at watching the twinkling lustre of Force-sensitive younglings wink out night by night as the First Order eliminated every one. “Not for long, I imagine,” she mutters.

  


“An untapped resource.” Byt’s eyes glitter darkly. When one is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

  


“What about Ben? Would he be strong enough to... help you… if you asked?”

  


_If only you knew, numa. You did not witness the immensity of his power at Mesa Outpost. He is strong, indeed. Very strong._

  


“Our Supreme Leader is on his own quest,” is all he utters aloud, and Sinya wonders how long it will be before she’s doing this again – stumbling through her own newly-barren farmland, pleading with him to desist.

  


  


~

  


  


On Rey-from-nowhere’s last day on Bri’n as a free woman, she hikes upriver to the waterfall, swims in its divinity pool until her fingertips are wrinkled and pruny, then meditates by its shoreline. Legs folded, palms pressed flat to the stone. The living Force is so vibrant here, she almost believes she could reach out and suspend the whole silvery column of tumbling water, if she tried.

  


Eyes shut, she draws in a lungful of clean woodland air – so much sweeter than the recycled oxygen circulating through a spacecraft. The thunderous roar of the falls and birdsong in the boughs above fill her ears; magical, compared with howling sandstorms and grunting happabores on Jakku. Here, ten minutes seems like a long time and the days seem like an eternity.

  


She knows that her friends downriver are safe and content – their visits have not dwindled, even after two weeks – and that she cannot stop bad things happening across the galaxy, even if she tunes into the HoloNet non-stop and reads the Jedi Texts until she can recite them backwards by memory.

  


In her quiet contemplation here, she can think about love, the people she cherishes, and what is _right_ with her life. It feels like the Maker’s whisper is in the trees, branches rustling softly in a breeze of her own making. In a place like this, it seems preposterous that anyone would need a lightsaber or a blaster, that anyone could exist in this galaxy without being humbled by its beauty.

  


As she slows her breathing, water droplets slicking the stone around her coalesce and float into the air. Behind her, the few treasures she has packed for the return journey – Master Skywalker’s texts, two lightsabers and Han’s dice – rise up, along with pebbles and fallen leaves. Tiny rivulets of water peel away from the falls, drawn toward her by some transcendental power.

  


Peace. Stillness. Balance.

  


After several moments, she feels herself lift from the rockface and hover there, cushioned mid-air by pure energy.

  


Subsonic vibrations resonate in her chest. For a split second, Rey is convinced it is some nuance of opening herself so completely to the Force – levitation is a new phenomenon, one she would never have thought possible until the first time she lifted – until she opens her eyes.

  


High above the copse of emerald-needled evergreens, the Griffin is soaring into the sky. It’s the largest of the Resistance’s fleet, with a single hangar housing all of their remaining starfighters.

  


Her first thought: _They’re leaving without me._

  


Rey has known for days now, even before… _distractions…_ that she will inevitably have to swallow her pride, refasten the collar and trundle downriver, back to base camp. Many of them will welcome her with open arms, especially Finn and Rose, who badger her about it incessantly at every visit. Besides, she has Kaydel’s remote control, and could probably disable Poe in all manner of ways with or without the Force, should she need to.

  


They would have told her if they were leaving… wouldn’t they?

  


_No! Come back!_ she screams inside. 

  


_Quiet, girl!_ An unwanted memory resurfaces: etching strikes into a rusty AT-AT wall among dried nightbloomers and a knitted Resistance soldier in miniature, tallying the days since they abandoned her. By three hundred, her facade was shattered. Three hundred scores means they’re never coming back. And still, little Rey of Jakku paid them lip service to anyone who would listen, and kept right on carving. One stroke for every day of slavery, as three hundred became four, then a thousand, then she stopped counting. It became a daily ritual to remind her she was still alive, that all of this had to have purpose.

  


Her meditative trance broken, she drops from the air, her bottom striking moss-covered rock. Goosebumps erupt across her flesh. Holding her breath while the frigate ascends, part of her waits on tenterhooks for all the other Resistance vessels to come into view alongside it.

  


“ _Rey.”_

  


His voice straightens her spine and snaps the world back into focus.

  


_Kriff!_ She’s let herself lapse. Meditation keeps him out. Focused concentration keeps him out. For three solid days, her psychic walls have been impenetrable. She’s not at the beck and call of some anomalous Force-bond to a monster, created by his erstwhile Master for personal gain.

  


And last night… last night was a release. A consolidation of unmet need, solitude, and all of the sordid memories and carnal images he had projected. The Ben Solo who touches her in dreams is impossibly far removed from the bloodthirsty creature lurking behind her now. That grunt, surely a nocturnal animal from the forest. Jumping at shadows like she always does. He hadn’t been there, watching her. 

  


He _hadn’t._

  


There’s a raw tinge of loneliness in his words. “Let me in.” 

  


Steeling herself, she tries to sever the astral thread, cut him loose – but it’s pointless. His grip is already unshakeable. 

  


“I need to speak with you.” He sounds choked, desperate. “Don’t shut me out. Please don't shut me out." 

  


“I don’t want to talk to you,” she hisses. Without turning around, she fumbles behind her, fingers traversing wet stone until they settle on the rough-hewn fabric of her scout pack. Her environs are invisible to him, she reminds herself. She’s still safe here. As are her friends… who may have just abandoned her. Fixating determinedly on the towering waterfall, she tries to blink away the overlaying image of his sterile sleeping chamber, those luxurious, silken sheets she definitely _hadn’t_ felt sliding together beneath her naked skin last night. 

  


“I can find you,” he snaps, and her hand closes over a bulky object inside the pack. 

  


“No you can’t!” she hurls back furiously. “You can’t see my surroundings. You said it yourself.” 

  


She feels him bristle, leather gloves creaking as he clenches and unclenches his fists. 

  


"I want to see you in person. For real.” All of the warmth drains from his voice. “Don’t make me have to use the Force to find you. I _will_ find you.” 

  


Slowly, Rey turns toward him. His face is a twisted mask of fury, dark eyes narrowed to slits, intent and focused. 

  


“No. You _won’t_ ,” she snaps. One hand clutching each semicircle, she raises the necklet. 

  


Kylo’s brow creases – then, recognising the device, his eyes flash. “Rey, don’t -” 

  


Without hesitation, she locks the neural disruptor collar around her throat. There’s a brisk, metallic click, and Kylo Ren vanishes. 

  


On the surface, nothing has changed; but without the living Force, everything is somehow less. Like switching off a glowplate, her beautiful surroundings are immediately duller, devoid of magic. The difference between hyperawareness and normalcy is vast; everything was imbued with such otherworldly radiance, she wonders how she never saw it before. Drawing a deep lungful of fragrant air, she holds it for as long as she can, then slowly exhales. 

  


She’s crippled herself. 

  


But this way, he’s powerless. He’ll never break through. 

  


It’s time. 

  


  


~ 

  


  


“Peeeeeeeanut!” 

  


If Rey had any second thoughts about her decision to return, Finn’s enthusiasm dissolves them straight away. Arms outstretched, he is bolting along the riverbank before she is even a stone's throw from base camp. 

  


"Hey, stranger," he chuckles, wrapping her in a bear hug that makes her heart swell. 

  


“Hey, Big Deal,” she greets, beaming despite herself. Over his shoulder, she sees the Resistance base camp is still a humming hive of activity. Smoke drifts from campfires in dark, wispy ropes and familiar frigates, filling their makeshift spaceport, are crawling with service technicians. The smell of roasting blubberbird fills the air. 

  


“You’re back!” As they separate, Finn appraises her at arm's length, inspecting the collar. “Wait… you’re back, right?” 

  


Rey twists slightly, showing him the rucksack harnessed to her back. With twelve sacred tomes inside, it’s ridiculously heavy. “Yes.” 

  


“Here, let me take that.” 

  


She shakes her head, hitching the pack a little higher on her back. 

  


Finn prattles on about their day-to-day operations during their short stroll back to camp together. Lieutenant Connix is already talking about uprooting and moving them all to Dulathia. Melee combat and rifle range training with the recruits continues, but with zero remaining starfighters planetside now, flight training will grind to a halt. The Cloud Riders are surprisingly skilful tutors in the art of warcraft, but refuse to join the fight. Three generations of rebellion against Crimson Dawn and the First Order have softened them into pacifists, Finn comments, disgruntled. 

  


When she asks about the Griffin, he tenses up a fraction. There’s been a division in the ranks, he relates wistfully, glancing up at the cloudless sky. Some heroic mission of Poe’s from which he was forcibly excluded. In the general’s short absence, Connix has already stepped into his role. 

  


His ramblings fade as Rose rushes to them, arms crossed in mock indignation. 

  


“Rey! It's about kriffing time,” she grouses. “I’ve got news.” 

  


Rey feigns what she hopes resembles excitement. She knows exactly what’s coming – every blessing she could ever have dreamed of for herself. Friends. Community. Passionate, unapologetic love. A hand to hold through triumph and adversity. And now… family, too. Children. Neither of them will ever be alone again. The neural disruptor feels heavier than ever across her collarbones. 

  


"I’m pregnant!” she announces with the shadow of a smile, and Rey beams back, a little too brightly, feeling more hollow than before. 

  


  


~ 

  


  


Watching Kaydel now, sitting by the communal fireplace over a cup of hot caf, Rey can’t help but notice how very like Leia she is. 

  


It must be the new hairstyle, she thinks. Dirty-blonde locks coiled about her head in delicate, interwoven braids. She’s seen many holographic images of Leia as a young princess, when her hair was a lustrous mahogany-brown and intricately styled, instead of the elegant pewter-streaked chignon she wore in her latter years. Before misfortune and heartbreak carved deep furrows into her features. 

  


Or perhaps it’s her calm countenance. The way she carries herself, like a natural leader. During the short time they’ve been seated together, Kaydel has greeted every passerby by name, smiling warmly. Despite what little Finn has divulged of the colony’s unrest, the lieutenant seems to command a genuine respect with all of them. Her khaki uniform proudly bares the Resistance insignia, albeit a nostalgic symbol now, with so few members left alive. 

  


It might even be her shameless caf addiction, Rey considers fondly as Kaydel lifts the thermajug to her lips. Their second-in-command seems to subsist on next to no sleep, her life measured in moments between one steaming mug and the next. Rey’s fireside chats with Leia over Tarine tea feel so achingly familiar right now, part of her wants to pull out the Aionimica, flip to its bookmarked page and set to work. She misses Leia’s mentorship terribly. 

  


She realises she’s been staring for way too long when the blonde officer quirks a curious eyebrow at her. 

  


“Something I can do for you?” she offers whimsically. “Another cup?” 

  


Rey shakes her head. With the way the soldiers are scrutinising her as they pass, she can’t afford to be jumpier than she already is. 

  


“You don’t need that silly thing any more, you know,” Kaydel adds, jutting her chin at the collar. “Our illustrious general has up and left.” 

  


“I’d rather keep it on.” For the second time today, Rey plasters a fake smile across her face and lies through her teeth. It’s actually easier, without access to her comrades’ thought processes. “Not everyone here trusts me like you do.” 

  


The lieutenant shrugs. “Suit yourself, hun. You have the remote.” 

  


“Thank you.” 

  


“He probably left the spare behind with all his stuff, if you...” 

  


Rey waves a hand dismissively. “No. I hope I won’t need it for long, anyway.” For how long will Kylo Ren hunt her? Prey on her, in moments of weakness? Counting her breaths, she tries to banish the thought. “Where is Poe? I saw the Griffin launching this morning...” 

  


Kaydel leans forward, her chin coming to rest on one balled-up fist. “Well, in his infinite wisdom, our new general decided that pitting twelve of our best pilots against the entire First Order Navy was a good idea.” She rolls her eyes. “Some people need to get their heads out of their cockpits. He wouldn’t listen to common sense. Three-quarters of our army agreed with him, too… groupthink and all that. So now, we’ve lost our biggest frigate and all of our starfighters.” 

  


“What are they going to do?” 

  


“Biological warfare, he reckons. The Cloud Riders handed over a case of viral bombs, full of an airborne haemorrhagic virus. Fatal within one standard day. Assuming any of those dolts actually make it aboard a Star Destroyer intact, it’ll only take one in the ventilation system to kill the whole crew.” Gulping down one more mouthful, she stares pensively into her mug as if the caf-grounds left behind will foretell the future. “Best case scenario, they take out one-third of the fleet. Wherever the Order is, they’re beyond our long-range radars, so I figure we’ll have… ten standard days, minimum… before we’re being hunted again.” 

  


Rey stares at her, speechless. 

  


“He’s got Chewie, C’ai, Lando -” 

  


“What if they fail?” Rey interrupts. _What if they don't?_ “Will you evacuate again?” 

  


Kaydel arches her neck to stare up at the darkening sky, and Rey wonders if she is already scouring for battlecruisers and dreadnoughts, winking into existence from hyperspace. “Our comms signals are encrypted, and even then, only the lead vessel will be transmitting back to us. So even if they totally krong things up… we’re safe here for now. Either way, we’ll all have targets on our backs. _Again._ ” 

  


The first tendrils of fear begin to clutch at her stomach. “And… and if we’re not?...Safe here?” 

  


“Then Peazy and the quartermaster and I pack us all up, send up Lando’s fancy-pants yacht to distract them and take a few token potshots, and get the varp out of here.” Her gaze falls to Rey’s stricken face. “Don’t worry, hun, it won’t come to that again. Not on my watch. I’ve taken precautions to ensure our base is undetectable.” 

  


_Don’t make me have to use the Force to find you._

  


“Leaving is probably the worst thing we could do right now,” Kaydel explains. “With everything I’m reading on HNN these days, any vessel in the Outer Rim that’s not First Order Navy is seriously farkled – a fine time for Poe to launch an attack. At least he gave the Finalizer to Chewbacca. That Wookiee's a wily one. If all else fails, we might at least end up with a new Supreme Leader, one who’s not as mad as a cut pole-snake.” 

  


Absently, Rey traces the rim of her collar. How closely has he already looked? 

  


“You should’ve heard Poe’s almighty `are we men, or are we mice’ spiel,” she muses, barking out a laugh. “Oh... wait. I didn’t mean… Your being here or not wouldn’t have made any difference.” 

  


She locks eyes with the lieutenant. “It’ll make a difference now,” she replies quietly. 

  


“What’re you going to do, talk him out of it? I’ve already tried that. Comms are down unless Poe needs to transmit something.” 

  


“No, no, I mean...” Rey appraises her carefully. “As long as I’m here, you’re all in danger.” She’d freed her from the brig, unshackled her when Poe’s back was turned, and visited almost every day of her self-imposed exile. Is Kaydel trustworthy? 

  


Does she have a choice? 

  


“Kylo Ren can find me,” she blurts out. “Here, on Bri’n. Anywhere.” 

  


The lieutenant smiles, but it’s wary, off-kilter. “I know you’re not double-dealing, even if Poe doesn’t,” comes her immediate reply. “I've seen what you can do, Rey. Everything you’ve done for us already. Our _real_ hero.” She pauses, contemplating. "How does he find you?" 

  


“Through the Force,” Rey insists, her voice louder, verging on frantic. “My Force-signature. It will draw him here, the whole First Order, to all of you.” _If it hasn’t already,_ she thinks. 

  


Drawing a deep breath, she watches her confidante’s face go pale, drawn tight, as realisation sinks in. 

  


“If the Resistance is in the Order’s sights again, then just my being here puts you all in jeopardy.” 

  


Kaydel grimaces; she can almost hear the cogwheels turning in her mind. Peveron. Dathomir. Seregar. Narrow escapes, near misses and dead comrades-in-arms at the hands of Kylo Ren, all in Rey’s wake. And now, Bri’n. 

  


Wordlessly, they watch the soldiers going about their evening routines, murmuring to each other in hushed tones. Rey has already spoken with them all; polite conversation, but careful never to linger too long. Without the background chatter of their thoughts, it seems as though they all hold their prodigal Jedi in suspicion. 

  


“I’ll leave,” she declares finally. 

  


“No, honey, we’ll find another -” 

  


“There’s no other choice," she interjects. Tugging the binary beacon from her wrist, she holds it out to the lieutenant. Maybe, millions of parsecs from here, she will uncollar herself and reach out to Ben one last time. To wheedle out how much he already knows. 

  


_To warn him,_ her subconscious nags. No matter what he is - no matter what he’s done - the thought of a universe without Ben in it turns her stomach. Right now, her decision to exclude him is hers alone; if Poe's mission is successful, that decision will be taken away. She’s wounded Ben already, probably beyond repair. It had only taken two rogue smugglers, Han and Chewbacca, to disable Starkiller’s shields and plant enough explosive charges to tear down its oscillator. And, though numb to the Force, the Wookiee’s expert marksmanship near-fatally wounded Kylo Ren. 

  


Chewie _will_ succeed, she knows, or else die trying. 

  


He’ll kill him without remorse, and she’ll have no one. She has already spent too many years losing what she cannot afford to do without. 

  


Setting down the thermajug by her boots, Kaydel covers her face with her hands, deep in thought. Watching her with baited breath, Rey waits for the heated accusations to come. _Traitor. Poe was right. You've condemned us all._

  


They don't come. 

  


“Take Calrissian’s PLY-3000,” she huffs at last. “It sticks out like a sore thumb anyway.” 

  


“Kaydel," Rey murmurs back, “I’m so sorry.” 

  


Peeking out from between her fingers, the officer affords her a chagrined half-smile. “May the Force be with you, honey. We’ve lost twelve good men already. I can’t lose you, too.” 

  


In their final hours together, they chatter about easy, innocuous nothings, like they always did before. Exotic teas. Whether loth-wolves and the Bedlam spirits truly exist. The bizarre way an Ithorian feeds itself, stuffing chunks of meat into two flapping maws at the base of its leathery neck. Why Ewoks will worship anything golden and shiny, and how the whole affair on Endor completely went to C-3PO's head. Safe topics. As if the galaxy is not about to erupt into Chaos all around them. 

  


By the time she bids her farewell, Rey knows exactly what it is about Lieutenant Connix that reminds her of Leia Organa-Solo. 

  


She never misses a step, displaced but still determined. It’s her ability to see reason, when everyone else is holding onto delusions of grandeur. 

  

  


~

  


  


There she is, immortalised in a faded photograph. The diminutive human who never failed to make him laugh, who mispronounced “may the Force be with you” as “may the fish be snotty” in Ryl every single time, and who played with his lekku, trying to shape them into the right positions for his non-verbal language, until he finally confessed how good it felt. Who then grinned in that mischievous way of hers and played with them some more. _Freykaa_ Kira. Pressing his lips gently to her picture, Kopecz positions it alongside Plagueis’s holocron, kneels at his bedside and begins his evening prayer.

  


A disembodied blue orb again today. Nothing more. What he wouldn’t sacrifice to manifest both of them.

  


_Peace is a lie. There is only passion._

_Through passion, I gain strength._

  


Or an ear… her beakish nose… black curls… anything.

  


_Through strength, châts nu midwan._

  


Failure is the greatest teacher. With each recitation, he edges closer to victory, when his chains will be broken.

  


_Through midwan, châts nu victory._

  


He carries out the ritual daily without fail, unless he’s in transit between worlds. No sense in robbing one’s crewmates of their willpower, or worse, killing them outright. He knows not whether he will ever succeed, but that long ago ceased to be the point. It has become something else; a testament, perhaps, to his insistence that this life of desolation and solitude has a purpose.

  


_Ashajontû, kotswinot itsyl._

_Wonoksh Qyâsik nun. Peace is a lie._

  


It isn’t just his imagination. The holocron radiates a faint scarlet light from within, casting misshapen shadows of its inscriptions onto the walls of his chamber. Its glow is not pulsatile, as it is when he chants the _Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut,_ but it still gives him pause. Until now, the artefact has otherwise lain dormant.

  


_There is only passion,_ he continues, trying to disregard it – but its luminescence only intensifies, commanding his attention.

  


Fingers slipping between the quilt and the tiny pyramid, he lets it roll into his palm, lifting it to eye-level, the Sith Code momentarily abandoned. When the ancient spirits wish to speak, Kopecz Ren listens.

  


  


~

  


  


In days of yore, the Force was in turmoil. While the Jedi Council strived to uphold peace and justice in the galaxy, the Sith conspired to overthrow it.

  


Anakin Skywalker was a child borne of the cosmic Force. The Chosen One, prophesied in Jedi and Sith lore alike, was destined to bring balance.

  


Under the watchful eye of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the humble slave boy from Tatooine rose to become one of the strongest Jedi in galactic history.

  


There was one factor, however, for which the Force did not accommodate. With the human spirit comes human fallibility. The most devastatingly powerful foe the darkness had ever known lost his mother on Tatooine, tortured and killed by Tusken raiders. Grief consumed him. In time, he grew to cherish Padmé Amidala Naberrie, and slowly but surely became gripped with the fear of losing her, too. Time does not heal all wounds; they are covered with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but the wound remains. Darkness seeped into his veins, poisoning their innocent love with grains of doubt.

  


In the Jedi Order, attachment is forbidden. Possessive love corrupted the Chosen One, and he fell to the dark side. Darkness is universal. It lurks in the deepest recesses of the hearts and minds of all sentient beings, seeds waiting to sprout. The brightest sunlight casts the darkest shadow.

  


Henceforth, the Force remained unbalanced; the Sith rose to power with the Galactic Empire and all but annihilated the Jedi.

  


But just as love corrupted Darth Vader, at the end of his reign of terror, love would be his redemption. To save his son’s life, he turned against his Master, sacrificing himself in the process.

  


For a time, balance was restored.

  


Two generations later, the Force sought to set right its past misreckonings. The Chosen One’s grandson, born of noble blood, was imbued with unfathomable power in the light and the darkness. Trained by Darth Vader’s son, his feet were set upon the path of his forefathers.

  


One night as he lay in slumber, his trusted master reached into his mind and foresaw his destiny: pure, unbridled evil. Fire, the roar of explosions and the howl of lightsabers; the unseeing eyes of the dead. In his own folly and arrogance, the master brandished a lightsaber against the sleeping boy – and in that moment, an egregious mistake altered the fate of the universe catastrophically.

  


In an effort to avert the unspeakable events he had foreseen, the last Jedi inadvertently cemented them in history.

  


Darkness rises – and light, to meet it. Ten solar cycles from his birth, the cosmic Force touched another sentient being; a human girl. A forgettable nobody, at first glance; born to a pair of alcoholic marauders who sold her into slavery for drinking-money. Untrained, she rose as an avatar of the light, to counterbalance the boy’s darkness. His equal.

  


At the apotheosis of his power, he fell in love with her.

  


The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.

  


Love is more than a candle.

  


Love can ignite the stars.

  


  


~

  


  


The apocalypse might have begun when the Abrion Sector was attacked.

  


One cannot purge the galaxy of crime cartels, their bases and their fleets, without collateral damage. Several months into the Supreme Leader’s quest, a certain measure of collateral damage became acceptable, and then, as each week elapsed, a little more.

  


For the first time in history, six syndicates rallied together against the First Order for self-preservation. When the allied insurgents' ultimatum was not met – the Supreme Leader not conceding to the demands of terrorists - their first target, naturally, was the galaxy’s breadbasket. Without a reliable food supply, hundreds of worlds would perish for Kylo Ren’s stubbornness. The attack was merciless and perfectly synchronised, overwhelming the sector’s airborne defences in a matter of minutes.

  


On Ukio, the opening salvo began with proton torpedos ripping through the atmosphere like meteorites, setting fire to the forests south of Sashasa. Rising smoke clouds sent panic rippling through the Capital seconds before its command centre was proton-bombed, then its barracks, then its surrounding villages. By the time the Overliege summoned reinforcements, perilously underequipped for a full-blown dogfight, her dominion was decimated. Five standard hours later, Kluub Ren herself was dead, killed by the First Order’s own turbolaser fire.

  


The Order won – it always wins – but it was a pyrrhic victory.

  


Or maybe it started the first time Kylo ignited Al-Jinn Ren’s lightsaber pike, ambushed by Black Sun’s mercenaries before their base was stormed. Raising her red blade, he let its fatalistic aura seep into his lungs like a noxious gas, and butchered every adversary with vacant indifference. Afterwards, everything began to make sense.

  


Because nothing is sacred. Everything must die.

  


Or perhaps it all started on a much smaller scale. Two souls destined to entwine, were ripped apart when one surrendered to the darkness and the other refused to follow. Like two stars orbiting a common barycentre but never quite colliding, fate crossed their paths again and again, until the champion of the light finally understood the atrocities of which her dark prince was truly capable, and severed all ties forever.

  


The following months were bleak times.

  


With food in short supply, chaos spread through the galaxy like wildfire. Pirates and marauders trafficking foodstuffs flourished, able to name any price for their wares. The First Order’s industries collapsed as its slave labourers mutinied en masse, rebelled, or starved to death. Anarchy reigned supreme.

  


_He would bring destruction and pain and death, and the end of everything I love because of what he would become, and for the briefest moment of pure instinct, I thought I could stop it._

  


In his gloomiest, most fatalistic moments, Supreme Leader Ren almost wished Master Skywalker had come to him sooner - before he’d developed the strength to retaliate.

  


At some point during the ensuing mayhem, the dark lord became aware of an unutilised stockpile of Sun Crushers in the Bilbringi Shipyard.

  


Condemned by his subjects as the despot responsible for the downfall of his entire empire - despite his indefatigable efforts to the contrary – isolated and devoid of all hope… Darth Ren elected to _use_ them. Through him, the powers of chaos and anarchy would be harnessed and exploited, cleansing the universe of its insurgents.

  


  


~ 

  


  


As soon as her Y-wing limps into the Finalizer’s empty hangar with almost no fuel and a broken hyperdrive, smoke and steam shooting out from all the wrong places, Rey knows that something is terribly wrong here. There had been no shields to traverse, no request for clearance codes, and only two errant TIE fighters, easily disabled with mechu macture.

  


Locating the command bridge is easy – after years rappelling into ravaged Star Destroyers and wandering their dusty halls, Rey thinks she could do it blindfolded – but the battlecruiser’s corridors are eerily deserted. She encounters just four Stormtroopers en route in total, all subdued into a blissful Force-sleep before they register their unwelcome guest.

  


Five hundred lives on Dulathia hinge on her success. Probably billions more, on whatever handful of planets the dark lord has left unscathed so far. Days and days of duelling with Finn and the recruits, pouring over the Sacred Texts, meditation and puritanical self-discipline, and the last Jedi is ready to face the last Sith lord in existence. Her final rite of passage. 

 

Still, she’s afraid.

  


Ben – if there’s anything of _Ben_ left any more – doesn’t speak as she enters, but she knows he senses her, just as his tumultuous presence in the Force guided her to him. She can _feel_ it. After eleven standard months of collaring and vigilantly blocking him out, and another six of nothing, his Force-signature feels as familiar as if it were yesterday. The viewport is alight with stars, reflected on the command bridge’s black-lacquered walls like a mirror. At its centre shines the distant sun of Datar.

  


Beside it, raised up on a dais, is a rancor-leather swivel chair large enough for a giant. Its backrest faces her, while its occupant stares out into space. The Jedi Killer. The king, surveying his kingdom.

  


She is here to save what little he hasn't yet destroyed.

  


Approaching the platform, Rey’s heartbeat hammers against her ribs. Whatever twisted creature the darkness has moulded him into these past months, since she turned her back on him – she doesn’t want to see. Not the pieces of his soul he has traded in an eternal hunger for destruction, not his ravenous lust for power, despite everything he has already obliterated.

  


His victims’ death throes have been an unending din in her mind, a constant, soul-shattering turbulence in the Force. It’s the Hosnian Cataclysm reimagined, everywhere, every single day. No matter how many innocents perish, the First Order does not relent. The black void of his rage knows no bounds.

  


Absently, she touches her fluttering stomach, then Finn’s lightsaber, affixed to her belt. Its weight at her hip is comforting.

  


It’s time to finish this. No matter what abomination he has become, it was of his own making – _not_ hers, she reminds herself sternly. Rey has not navigated here from her new homeworld several systems away, only to cower from him now. 

  


Before she can muster the courage to speak, Darth Ren utters a single word, emotionless and flat.

  


“Leave.”

  


She hasn’t laid eyes on him in person since Seregar, when they tried to kill each other. Or didn’t. Something in between. He'd have let her run him through him then, and forgiven her for it.

  


“Turn around and show yourself,” she challenges. Planting her boots firmly to the deck, she squares her shoulders and rolls Han’s gold dice between her fingers. Some luck they’ve been. She physically can not leave, not without stealing a vessel from the First Order’s fleet.

  


“Leave. Now. If you value your lives,” the voice urges again, hoarse from disuse. At least it’s his own – she knows he’s started wearing the helmet again, soldered together in red from the fragments he smashed. “The crew have already deserted.”

  


Rey hesitates. That explains why Hangar Five had been strangely empty. Not a single TIE fighter in sight; no frigates, no transporters, nothing.

  


“Don’t you know who I am?” She sounds calm, confident. Imposing.

  


Like a Jedi warrior ought to.

  


“Yes. I know exactly who you are.”

  


A step forward. “I’ve come alone,” she professes to the backrest. “And you promised -”

  


“I promised never to hurt you.” His chair shifts slightly. “But if you stay here, you will die.”

  


A fraught silence lingers between them for several beats.

  


“Have you come to kill me?” he adds, with a note of wry amusement.

  


She releases Finn’s lightsaber as if it burns her fingers, letting it drop back alongside her hip. “N… no.”

  


“ _Liar.”_

  


Another step. Killing the last remaining Sith lord was not her intention in coming here – but she has not ruled it out. Her self-appointed mission, with General Connix’s blessing, is to plead for the lives of the Resistance and the preservation of their homeworld. Convince him to end his reign of merciless destruction, if he is willing to listen. The Dulathia system, miraculously spared so far from the First Order’s fleet of Sun Crushers, is one of only a handful still in existence. As the Outer Rim Territories were systematically obliterated, the Resistance colony has been inundated with refugees; nearly five hundred strong, now.

  


“Why are you here?"

  


She has promised herself not to raise a hand against Darth Ren; not unless all else fails. But if peaceful negotiations are all she desires, why has she traversed thousands of parsecs to meet him in person? Through the bond, she can't injure him.

  


"Say it, Rey." 

  


In the flesh, she _can._

  


“ _Say it!”_ His deep voice reverberates through the chamber, making her flinch.

  


Rey is certain she can defeat him in combat now, should they cross blades, for her ally is the Force – and a powerful ally, it is.

  


But when she opens her mouth to retort, something entirely unexpected comes out.

  


“I was worried about you.”

  


The Supreme Leader scoffs. “ _Worried?!_ You turned against me long ago.”

  


“You changed, Ben,” she accuses, emboldened by some unknowable power. The spirits of her ancestors, maybe. “You chose a path I cannot follow.” Another step forward. Her footsteps echo across the obsidian deck.

  


“Ben Solo is dead,” he grates, and finally swivels to face her.

  


Rey has read of the dark Force’s decaying effect on the human body, but seeing his appearance now, an ashen pallor washes across her face.

  


There isn’t a single hair on his head. Ben’s lustrous sable mop is gone, along with his eyebrows and not-quite moustache that had been rough against her skin when he kissed her. His handsome features are distorted from forehead to chin by two lumpy keloid scars, his fine alabaster skin sallow and blotchy with a sickly purplish hue. And the chocolate pools of his eyes she loved so well… golden and incandescent now, the eyes of the Sith, staring at her with magnetic intensity. Enshrouded in black imperial garb that doesn’t hide the bulk of his frame, the Supreme Leader rises to his feet. The same inky gaberwool cloak he once wrapped around her shoulders to keep her warm, swirls by his leather boots.

  


“The person you knew is gone. Weak and foolish, like his father.”

  


Aghast at how far he has fallen, Rey bites down on her lower lip to stop herself screaming, or worse, bursting into tears. She stands her ground as he swiftly crosses the distance between them.

  


“You ought to leave. While you still can.”

  


_No._ Her Y-wing may be unserviceable now, but she _did_ coax it here on its last drop of coaxium, and she has come with a purpose. The Resistance’s last hope. The family Rey has forged in battle will not dwindle to extinction along with Darth Ren’s countless billions of victims. “I won’t,” she retorts. “Not until -” 

  


“I loved you, once,” he interrupts suddenly, red-rimmed eyes boring into hers.

  


For a moment that seems to stretch into an eternity, they simply stare at each other.

  


Rey can barely speak against the lump in her throat, fresh tears threatening to well up again. _Think of the mission._ “Then save my people,” she stammers. “My friends. They’re all I have left.”

  


He advances another pace, boots clicking on the deck. Beyond him in the star-encrusted mantle of the Inner Rim, the central sun of Datar seems to flare brighter.

  


“I’m done with the galaxy,” he rumbles softly, stopping only an arm’s length away. She had forgotten how tall he is, the way she’d needed to stand on tiptoes just to brush her lips along his jawline. “Your so-called _friends_ are safe. I have become more powerful than any Jedi has ever dreamed of, to protect my subjects… from themselves. But I’m finished with it now. All of it.” His scent is achingly familiar. Amber and cinnamon, and something inherently masculine that’s uniquely _Ben_. The aroma that lingered in her bedclothes after they grieved together, on her tunic, after she’d crawled into his sleeper.

  


Inside the withered Sith lord looming over her – son of darkness, heir to Lord Vader – there's still a glimmer of her Ben. His lips are the same, downturned, full and soft. And his eyes – their freakish yellow is jarring, but even now they hold an ancient sorrow, a depth of wisdom beyond his years. There’s still good in him, buried deep beneath the mire of hatred.

  


Instinct compels her to light her saber, pierce his heart and end Darth Ren’s cruel tyranny for good. But what she whispers back is, “Come away with me, Ben. This isn’t who you are. Leave everything else behind while we still can.”

  


Something inscrutable flits across his scarred face. “Rey, you don’t have to run any more. There’s nothing left to fight. I brought peace to our galaxy, hoping one day… one day… you’d see reason and return. We could’ve ruled together. Made things the way we wanted them to be.” With another short, halting step, his leather-clad hands come up to rest lightly on her shoulders. “But you turned against me, and now… now, it’s too late.”

  


“Why did you give up?” she breathes.

  


“Because… I couldn’t break through. I tried, every day, morning and night. And… and every time I… every time I failed…” Unable to finish, he opens his thoughts to her – just a sliver. Weeks and months of yanking wretchedly at the astral thread, trying to salvage everything he had ruined. Always encountering an impenetrable, iron-fast shield at the other end, her unfaltering rejection that ate away a little more of his spirit - eroded his humanity – with every passing day, until he could endure no more. The darkness was there for him, when she wasn’t.

  


Kylo shakes his bald head, eyes downcast. “You were too powerful. You still are.”

  


Had he persisted, she would have relented sooner or later, she thinks. Despite her mulish refusal to reach back to _him_. For one and a half solar cycles, she has convinced herself she doesn’t miss him… yet being here now, in his presence, feels like coming home. Ben will always draw her inexorably, like a gravitational field. Laying one hand over his, she lifts it away from her shoulder and rotates it, palm upward.

  


“Ben, these are yours.” Han’s lucky dice tinkle as she places them onto his palm, gently closing his fingers around them. They’d been her peace offering – a proverbial olive branch, not that a gold-plated knick-knack should constitute any kind of negotiation tool for the lives of her comrades. “You said you wanted me to give them to you in person.”

  


Golden eyes shining in the starlight, he pockets the dice and takes her hand. “Thank you, Rey.”

  


It feels like failure already; standing here aboard his flagship, staring out at an empty galaxy almost devoid of life forms, the living Force dimmed to near-obsolescence under his sovereignty. Ben grazes the pad of his thumb across her knuckles, warm, even through the leather.

  


“It’s not too late,” she murmurs, her throat tightening. Silent tears spill over in scalding trails down her cheeks. “Stop. Stop all of this, now! Come back with me.” _I loved you, too,_ she thinks, and that’s all it takes – that psionic expression of her pain. She’s in his arms between one heartbeat and the next. Ben’s embrace is every bit as solid and wonderful as she remembers. One of his big hands comes up to stroke her hair, and he leans down to press his cheek to hers so he can whisper in her ear.

  


“ _Love._ I love you.” He swallows thickly, his breathing ragged. “I don’t think I ever stopped.”

  


Her swollen belly rolls against his hipbone, poorly concealed underneath her earth-toned Jedi robes. Startled, the dark lord draws back a little, his brow creasing.

  


After one and a half solar cycles of separation, he’s back in her mind effortlessly, blundering through with all the stealth of a bull rancor. Unbidden memories come rushing up to the surface.

  


_That night, months later, when Wedge Antilles returns to Bri’n and confirms their worst fears – all eleven of the others captured by the First Order, communication lines scrambled, presumed dead. Their last stand against the enemy has failed. Banding together in shared sorrow, their hearts broken. Jet juice and emerald wine and Kowakian rum, more stocks than Rey knew they had, sculled by the bottleful. The largest bonfire they have ever built, burning all night to commemorate the lives of heroes who will never have their rightful funeral pyre._

  


_Breaking her oath never to let alcohol pass her lips._

  


_And wrought with grief, through a haze of liquor and the absolute knowledge that the one man she yearns for will never, never be hers… breaking other oaths as well. She tells herself it’s for warmth, for comfort, to stave off the crushing loneliness. A little piece of what she might have had. She has already tasted the forbidden fruit, offered up so eagerly in Ben’s projected memories, and she’s no Jedi._

  


_The recruit is a selfish lover, given to excess, and in all his excitement and drunken stupor, pays almost no attention to her pleasure. A bearded human whose name she doesn’t know and will have forgotten hers by the next morning. A_ somebody. _Within minutes of inebriated fumbling he has her stripped beneath him, wrapping her legs around his waist, and when he pushes into her the pain surges – like being split apart. Rose warned her, years ago, that it might hurt the first time. But her imagined first time with Ben had been tender and slow – far from this brute’s passionless, bestial rutting._

  


_She grits her teeth and scrunches her eyes shut while his hairy body slams into her hips, pumping in and out of her frenetically. The man stinks of stale liquor and body odour. When he spills inside her and collapses with a groan, his bodyweight is suffocatingly heavy – it feels like she’s being crushed._

  


_He thanks her afterward, slurring his words._

  


_Later, when the nameless man crawls away to sleep, Rey discovers she’s bleeding._

  


_She hates herself for it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, she thinks, snapping the neural disruptor around her neck as she pads to the river to wash herself. It’s time to put aside childish ideals about fated couples falling into each other’s arms and beds. All she is left with is shame._

  


_And with consequence._

  


Ben’s smile is an odd thing, doleful and haggard. His jealous heart recoils with a sting of bitterness through the bond. For a second, he strikes Rey as old and defeated, drained of whatever power he once possessed, and she feels like an intruder on his misery. Or the instigator of it, probably. She is certain he will shove her away now, label her a filthy whore then blast the Resistance’s safe haven to smithereens, just to spite her.

  


Instead, moving slowly – as if seeking her permission - his big hands skim down her arms to her abdomen. She’s almost eight months now, and when she doesn’t try to stop him, he splays his fingers reverentially to cradle her ripening belly, yellow eyes widening in wonder.

  


“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, weeping unashamedly now. Covering his gloved hands with hers, she does not pull them away when his thumbs come up to gently caress the bump.

  


“It doesn’t matter,” he murmurs to it. There’s a finality in his tone, a heaviness that makes her sob harder.

  


Amongst the lesser stars through the viewport, Datar’s sun seems to swell and brighten.

  


The baby kicks his palm, and Ben’s ruined face breaks into a watery, lopsided grin, baring those crooked teeth she once loved. “She would have been strong in the Force.” He lifts his gaze to meet hers. “Like you.”

  


“She should have been yours,” Rey whispers back, regretting the sentiment as soon as it is vocalised. But Ben’s reaction is not as she expected. Pressing his lips into a thin line, he shuts his eyes tight and nods.

  


Reaching up to trace her thumb along the line of his cheekbone, she lets him draw her back into his arms. She doesn’t want to think of what tomorrow holds for them, or the day after that. Only now, in his embrace, feeling the wetness of his cheek against her neck. As the central sun outshines all of its surrounding stars in the viewport, the ambient temperature soars.

  


“It’s in the past,” he sobs quietly. “Let the past die. Maybe in the next life, I won’t be such a fool.”

  


“Come with me now,” she pleads again, clinging to him like a lifeline. “It’s not too late. It’s never too late.” But she’s wrong… disastrously wrong… and maybe it comes from Ben's thoughts, but all at once, she _understands_. Panic floods through her. There’s no escape. Not a single working shuttle left behind. They’re trapped here together, and the command bridge is beginning to feel like a furnace. Had the decision been hers to make – a lifetime of mediocrity on Dulathia, or _this_ , these final precious minutes with the man who cherishes her more than anything – which would she have chosen?

  


“No, my love.”

  


Ben’s mammoth figure trembles against hers, his misery flaring hotter across the bond than the rapidly-expanding sun. Its reflection on the polished floor is a brilliant orange, as though the battlecruiser itself is already ablaze.

  


“It _is_ too late.”

  


In the blink of an eye, Datar’s unstable sun explodes, searing through the command bridge like a pillar of fire. A flash of blinding light, then the transparisteel opacifies and bows outward with a sickening, metallic groan. The immense heat sizzling into her skin hurts. The final echoes of Ben’s broken, desperate love through the bond hurt more. Pressing a kiss to his temple, she pulls him in tighter, praying that in the next lifetime - if such thing exists – she will recognise this perfect gift the universe has given her for who he is. For a priceless, eternal instant, she _is_ Ben.. she is the racing beat of his heart, she is the strong arms that tighten around her back and she is the whispers that spill from his lips, words of devotion and adoration and regret.

  


Two bodies, finally joined, completed by one another.

  


Her kindred spirit. Her beloved.

  


Her soulmate.

  


  


~

  


  


Darth Plagueis’s artefact slips from his palm and bounces unceremoniously onto the quilt, like a child’s building-block. Its internal red glow is douted, but its prophecy leaves him rattled, short-winded. After the catastrophe he just witnessed, returning to himself kneeling by a sleeper once again in the silent Sashasa barracks is disorientating.

  


He couldn’t see her face. Why couldn’t he see her face? The girl. Rey. From the desert hovel, the name Ben called out in his delirium. That lightsaber by her belly… She’d been afeared of the dark lord and faced him nonetheless. Selfless, forgiving, loving unconditionally; the spirit of a true Jedi.

  


Surely it cannot be _her_ … that kaleidoscope of light he sees so often during meditation, skipping haphazardly across the galaxy, never in the same place twice.

  


Kira’s portrait catches his eye again. There are four individuals in this realm who he treasures. Kylo Ren will murder them all.

  


Even before Bothawui, Kopecz saw in Ben the potential to rule the galaxy as a benevolent leader. He may have opened the floodgates, goading his brother to embrace the darkness and testing the limits of his power... but never has he foreseen that this starry-eyed Jedi aspirant from Chandrila could harbour enough hatred to obliterate his entire dominion. _Darth Ren_ , he thinks, shivering.

  


Drawing slow, measured breaths, he extends his consciousness beyond the Capital, beyond the Outer Rim, casting it wide across the cosmos. Sinya’s white maternal light englobes her Sector like a spherical force field. Ben’s roiling formation is in Hutt Space now, violet, like his lightsaber. Blue and red, never quite mixing. It has transmogrified since Kopecz first visualised it from Fralideja, when it was a volatile ellipse of sputtering vermilion.

  


And in the Bakura Sector, where he last marvelled at it on the planet Bri’n…

  


There’s nothing.

  


Nor anywhere else.

  


Perhaps Sinya was correct. Routinely eliminated by the First Order, as with any other Force-wielding being. Could an entity so transcendent be executed without so much as a ripple in the cosmic web?

  


_Ben. Nerra,_ his brother and closest friend, who exacted vengeance where Kopecz could not… will destroy everyone who is precious to him.

  


If anything is salvageable, their fate now lies with Kopecz. He will die before he allows Sinya and Kira’s resettled kin to be slaughtered. As much as he reveres Kylo Ren… the atrocities he has foreseen _will not_ come to pass.

  


No matter the cost.

  


Snatching up Kira’s photograph and Darth Plagueis’s artefact, Kopecz belts his saberstaff, tosses his cloak over one shoulder, and sweeps from the room.

  


  


~

  


  


Making a hasty escape is near impossible, it turns out, when one’s twin is equally attuned to the Force.

  


“ _Chuba_ , Byt! _Wait!_ ”

  


He ignores the hurried footfalls behind him, hoping she will lose heart and leave him alone. Perchance his torment over the holocron’s prophesy was enough to wake her. Halfway across the spaceport, Sinya intercepts him.

  


“Byt! _Byt!_ I didn’t say you have to leave!” she screeches to his back.

  


“It’s Kopecz,” he corrects gruffly. “We are Knights of Ren.”

  


Striding furiously across the duracrete tarmac, she halts directly in his path. “Frack! _Kopecz!_ Don’t be stupid!”

  


“You do not understand.” He presents his open palms toward her, an errant pang shooting through the machinery where his right arm should be.

  


Sinya seizes his wrists. “Then _make_ me understand. Mustafar holds nothing for you.”

  


“My destination is not Mustafar.” He clenches his fingers back around her own wrists, and she freezes.

  


“Then where do you think you’re… oh… _oh, Gods_...”

  


She falls silent as his presage begins to unspool in her mind.

  


The next few minutes rush by in a blur, with Sinya visibly wincing with each set of resonance torpedos launched into a central sun, every outcry of pain and suffering as billions are incinerated.

  


Her face crumpling in agonised disbelief, she sinks to her knees.

  


With the final scene – the Finalizer, engulfed in a formless mass of light along with Datar’s entire planetary system - she shakes her hands free and starts batting hysterically at all of her exposed skin, trying to extinguish the phantom flames there. Finding nothing, she frantically runs her palms over her face, neck, lekku. Her breath comes in jagged gasps.

  


“ _Numa.”_

  


Delicately, so as not to alarm her further, Kopecz lifts her to her feet with the Force.

  


“It’s not real, _ma sareen_ ,” he consoles, cupping her chin with his flesh-and-blood hand. “These events have not yet come to pass.”

  


“But they _will,_ ” she squeaks. It isn’t a question. “He’ll destroy us all.”

  


“The future is malleable, once foreseen,” he counsels, praying there is truth to his words. The Force is duplicitous and manipulative, and always gets what it wants in the end.

  


Her eyes glisten with tears. “I’m coming with you.”

  


“No. You shall remain here and defend your fiefdom. Contact Commander Weel and the Cardinal post haste. Have them redirect as much of the First Order armada to this sector as can be spared. As many Star Destroyers as possible.”

  


“How… how long until it happens?”

  


Stepping in close, he strokes her back lightly. “Fear not, _numa_. There is still time, but the onslaught will come without warning. You need to prepare yourself and your subjects; the welfare of our universe depends upon it.”

  


“Stay here,” she pleads, barely above a whisper.

  


“I cannot.”

  


“Then at least let me assign you a crew. An Upsilon-class command shuttle requires five slaves for maximum efficiency.”

  


“I am well-accustomed to piloting alone, and will not risk the lives of your subjects unnecessarily. Space is a treacherous place for a solitary vessel right now.” Releasing her, he glances back at the raptor-like transporter. His lekku writhe about his chest, crossing once over his sternum and back again over his heart. “Goodbye, Sinya. Be brave, stand tall and fight for what is yours.”

  


“ _Nerra_ … what are you going to do?”

  


His expression is pained, but resolute.

  


“What I must.”

  


Bowing deeply to his twin, Kopecz takes one last look at her tear-streaked, olive-green face. Then, spinning on his heel, he hastens toward the shuttle.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Twi'leki/Ryl translations:**  
>  _Nerra_ = brother  
>  _Numa_ = sister  
>  _Ma sareen_ = my dear  
>  _Chuba_ = Hey  
>  _Chini, wachamio_ = Come, let's go.  
>  _Tesa men yopatu ji youba stupache_ = I am not who you are looking for.  
>  _Freykaa_ = beloved
> 
>  **Quote:** Matthew Stover, _Revenge of the Sith_ (2005): "The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.”


	24. ...Be6!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wishes he could hold her like this for always, drifting in uncomplicated pleasure. Basking in the afterglow of sexual release, her light, and her affection, so freely given.
> 
>  _You,_ he thinks. _Stay. Stay with me, forever._

 

 

He must be sick.

 

Hallucinating.

 

Living creatures don’t just dissolve into thin air.

 

Uncle Lando – no, _General Calrissian_ , a Resistance figurehead whom Kylo will kill on sight – should have executed Voras the Hutt when he drove the Ivax Syndicate out of Cloud City.

 

Instead, he let them all escape, to rebuild their fortune in underground gambling and bloodsport. Lazy coward. Burnin Konn is now the central hub for the narco-spice trade in the Outer Rim Territories, and countless thousands of chattel slaves died, chained up and forced to cage-fight for their lives before a paying crowd.

 

That was, until the First Order made a raid on the capital, overwhelming the Syndicate’s entire garrison within minutes. Sure, half their slythmongers were probably off-world, and there are another four thousand slaves for transportation and resettlement on Nar Kanji, but another criminal organisation is no more.

 

It was fine when the Supreme Leader stormed Voras’s cantina, sweeping aside soldiers, bounty hunters and blasterfire with a casual wave of his hand. It was fine when he noticed vivid arcs of electricity jumping between his fingertips, determined not to lose control and electrocute them all with the Force, lest his own Stormtroopers be caught in the crossfire. It was even acceptable when he lit his saber, freeing Voras’s Twi’lek concubine by slicing through the chain between their necks, then levelling it at his throat.

 

What was _not_ fine was when the Hutt’s yellowish hide began to evaporate while Kylo tallied his crimes, like a dust-devil whipping at a sand dune. A golden cloud at first, but then – when the gargantuan slug began to shriek – reddish-black, as underlying bone fragments and sinew melted into the air.

 

He plunged his lightsaber through Voras’s skull, mercifully, before it could progress any further.

 

It was an impossible feat; atomising opponents using a concentrated Force wave was an ability unique to Darth Plagueis. One which Kylo Ren has only read about, never practised, and certainly never aspired to replicate. He didn’t know any creature could scream like that. On returning to the Finalizer, he’d smashed his fist through the ‘fresher mirror, repulsed by his own reflection. And in the shower, furiously scrubbing away pungent droplets of liquefied gore – another lock of his hair had fallen out.

 

He must be ill, he tells himself. Coming apart, body and spirit – maybe he’s finally succumbed to madness. The nightmares are getting worse. Now that his eyes have been opened to the horrific reality of his dominion, his despair grows with every passing day. No living being deserves the torture and squalor he has witnessed at Mesa Outpost, or Bilbousa, or Kala’uun. For every cartel he annihilates, there are a hundred others still operating unchecked. How is it that anyone can see such suffering and choose to make it all the worse?

 

Thoughts he’s desperately trying to banish right now.

 

From the darkened cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, now fully restored, refurbished and sporting the First Order insignia – Kylo stares blankly into the pitch-black interior of Hangar Five, pausing only for the occasional draught of Cheedoan whiskey. Its acrid burn in the back of his throat makes him feel more real, somehow; the sensation of weightlessness that started after he’d downed half the bottle, less so. He doesn’t know which is better.

 

He hasn’t indulged like this in years. With Snoke, he could never afford to let his guard down, and after the stone hut - when he envisioned the woman of his dreams, losing everything to her alcoholic parents’ selfishness - it became a self-imposed prohibition. A trivial sacrifice. For every shade of strange their relationship has become, the one thing that's never changed was... he could find her. But every time he reaches out through the Force now, she is nowhere. 

 

Tomorrow, dignitaries representing the diaspora across nineteen Mid Rim planets will board the Finalizer to officially pledge allegiance to the First Order. Having established blockades, expunged all criminal activity from the region and supplied every major city with fresh food and water, despite their refusal to surrender – the First Order is finally deemed worthy. Tomorrow, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren will don all of his imperial finery and stand tall while they bow down before him, a pathetic impostor of a sovereign ruler.

 

But for now, he is content to slouch in his father’s pilot seat, guzzling mind-numbing liquor until the haze of drunkenness finally, blessedly takes him.

 

 

~

 

 

When Rey appears in his dreams, there’s always a heady thrill of anticipation. He wants to fight her and fuck her in equal measure. He never knows which it will be.

 

Some nights, with eyes blazing and bared teeth, she ignites her weapon and charges. Roaring loud enough to drown out her war-cry, he will spring at her like a sand panther, lightsabers thrumming and crackling together as they lock mid-air. Rey’s onslaught is becoming increasingly difficult to weather, her stamina and technique both improved immensely. She’s been training, he thinks, not without a note of pride.

 

Other times, it’s a different kind of attack.

 

Some nights, no less ferocious than in battle, she will rip off his clothes and her own and savage him. There are rules: no touching, no holding, no kissing – and she’s out of focus somehow, especially her face. He _could_ touch her, he supposes - this is _his_ dream, after all – but the habit is so deeply ingrained, he will lay with his arms pinned flat in the dirt and let her use his body however she pleases. Subservience excites him, as it always has; when he’s vulnerable and helpless. A confusing arousal. It’s all he knows.

 

If ever he slips up and breaks the rules, she’s gone... leaving him alone with his nightmares.

 

Other nights, dream-Rey is cowed, grovelling. She’ll adopt any position, contort herself however he desires, take it as rough and depraved as he demands. She’ll call him my lord and Supreme Leader while he slithers inside her like the monster he is, full of darkness and death. No sordid fantasy is beneath her. This incarnation of Rey is so far removed from her true self that wanting her that way, even subconsciously, probably makes him a sick pervert.

 

In dreams – and _only_ in dreams – she is all his. No Force-annulling contraptions or conflicting allegiances will take dream-Rey away from him.

 

There are nights when she just lies pliant beneath him, looking up with half-fluttering eyelids and a lazy, sleepy smile while he pounds her lissom body into the mattress. Since he glimpsed those perfect, teardrop-shaped breasts through the bond, he sees them in dreams as well, jiggling with every frenzied thrust. When dream-Rey is like that, spreadeagled and happy, he watches himself slide into her over and over and takes selfishly, takes from her, takes everything he needs.

 

On some level, Kylo understands. None of them are _her._

 

They never will be.

 

Every time, he wakes to a cold sleeper, cheeks stiff with dried tears and a hollow, twisting sensation in his chest. If he doesn’t get up immediately, into the ‘fresher, into the training gym to smash something with a lightsaber – he will lay in bed, wallowing in pain and self-regret, until he is shaking with sobs and the humiliation of finding cum sticky on his thighs.

 

They never talk, save for their animalistic grunts in combat and in ecstasy. If he speaks aloud, he’ll wake to his idiotic, dazed self professing his devotion to thin air, like always.

 

The dream-Rey that fades into view tonight is one he has never before encountered. For one, her features are sharply defined; from the small half-moon scar over her right cheekbone to the chestnut river that gently caresses its way down her neck, reaching to just below her shoulder blades. Her beige tunic and capris barely conceal the subtle curves of her body. If the gods are real, then this woman is their masterpiece. Instead of the usual wash of red mist against a black canvas, she is simply perched atop her berth, hands folded and barefoot, her legs swinging idly over the edge.

 

He can’t remember when last his dreams were so lucid, moreso passed-out drunk like he is now. Meeting his gaze, Rey’s shining hazel eyes crinkle around the corners and her lips curl into a welcoming smile.

 

“Hi, Ben.”

 

Kylo shrugs off his cloak and approaches her with trepidation, waiting to see if she’ll withdraw her lightsaber or launch herself at him like a sabercat in heat.

 

She does neither.

 

“What… what do you want?” he dares ask, and her grin broadens. Unlike in dreams past, their voices aren’t distorted or echoey, muffled through the haze.

 

Rey looks at him in a way that is wholly different to anything Kylo has ever experienced, patting the mattress beside her in a silent invitation. He’s quick to comply, like always. It dips beneath his considerable weight, angling her into him a little.

 

“I think I’d like to kiss you again,” she says shyly, peering up through dark, full eyelashes. “Can I kiss you?”

 

He nods. Waits. Not allowed to touch. He shouldn’t even have spoken.

 

“Not like… um, not like you taught me. Like _I_ want to.”

 

Kylo nods vehemently again, his breeches already becoming too tight. She hasn’t tried this before.

 

That sweet smile never leaves her lips as she threads her fingers into his hair, tugging him down.

 

This dream-Rey doesn’t kiss like a drunken Squamatan or timidly, like a Sarkhai. Or even like Soniee, before she instigated the no-kissing rule.

 

To begin with she’s deceptively gentle, brushing her lips lightly over his, capturing his full lower lip with tiny, lingering kisses full of softness and the promise of things to come.

 

When he doesn’t resist or try to touch her, she turns into something else.

 

She kisses like she’s starving, and he is the last portion she’ll be given in a month. Like she’s afraid he will be taken away from her. It isn’t sensual - it’s covetous, desperate, like the greedy way she devoured his jogan fruit, juice dribbling down her chin. She’s ferocious and aggressive and messy, all teeth and tongue. All of his meticulous instruction, disregarded. When he tries to pull away, to mouth soft kisses along her jawline or nibble her earlobe - she yanks him back insistently, her small fingers fisting in his hair. He thinks she might devour him whole if he isn’t careful.

 

He must be missing time – that happens, in dreams – because when Rey finally withdraws, she’s seated in his lap, ankles crossed behind his lower back. As they separate, she runs her pink tongue over her lips as if savouring the taste of him.

 

“Ben,” she murmurs, “I like the way you kiss me.” With her eyes still shut, so relaxed and contented like this – she is sensuality in its purest, most natural form. He drinks in the sight of her, trying to commit everything to memory – the dimples creasing her cheeks, each freckle clustered in the soft skin of her face and dusting the tips of her shoulders.

 

“I -” The words hitch. He’s afraid to say anything for fear he might shatter this fragile, fleeting thing between them.

 

Rey opens her eyes, smiling coyly. “Do you like… when I do it… that way?”

 

 _Force, Rey, you don’t know. You have no idea._ He’s painfully aware of her centre pressing against his groin, teasing him with gentle friction every time she shifts slightly. “I… yes.”

 

Tracing his puckered scar with her fingers, she leans in to whisper in his ear. “Good.” Calloused fingers. Rubbing the length of his scar. He’d like to feel them everywhere. “I want you to do something for me. Please.”

 

 _Anything._ She’s clearly expecting a response. “What?”

 

“I’d like to see you.” The sweet rasp of her voice tickles his ear.

 

There’s a faint yellow-purplish bruise blooming at the junction of her neck and shoulder, where he’d bitten her and sucked, hard. Before. Jaw clenched, he resists the urge to do it again. Her skin is warm and smells delectable.

 

“I want to see you, too.”

 

She pulls back with a coquettish grin. “No, I mean...” Trailing one fingertip all the way to the place where his scar disappears beneath the collar of his tunic, she gives the fabric a suggestive tug. “I’d like to see your body… all of it. I think… I think you should take all of this -” she gestures down his chest to his breeches - “off. That’s what people do, isn’t it? In this sort of dream?”

 

It’s difficult to focus on anything but her minuscule movements against his pelvis; she seems completely oblivious to the effect she’s already having on him. “You first,” he rasps.

 

“But this is _my_ dream.”

 

He worries at his lower lip. Do as she says, or she’ll vanish and he can worship her from afar forever.

 

“And… and I think, before you do anything, I’d like to just look at you.” Wriggling off his lap, she climbs to her feet in front of him and waits expectantly.

 

Kylo hesitates, uncertain.

 

“You... saw me already,” he protests weakly, avoiding her gaze.

 

“Only from the back,” she replies. “And that… that other time on the island, when I said to put a cowl on or something.” Her tanned skin has a rosiness to it, crimson colouring her cheeks. “I… um, liked what I saw. But -” her eyes flicker once again to his trousers, the hardening mound where she was seated astride him moments ago - “I’d like to see… more.”

 

This inquisitive, unblinking dream-Rey is new. Heat rises to the tips of his ears. She hasn’t demanded this before, and the few times he’s been naked in dreams, his body was undefined, fuzzy at the edges, like wisps of smoke.

 

“I have… scars,” he mumbles. “A lot of scars.”

 

Her smile doesn’t falter. “I have scars, too,” she replies nonchalantly, as though it should be obvious.

 

He’s hideous underneath all the layers of imperial garb, he knows. Too pasty. Disfigured and mutilated with memories he’d rather forget. All gangly limbs, fumbling hands and inexperience. A kriffing _charity case_. Soniee had commented as much many times, all while rebuffing his clumsy efforts to get her off. After their first solar cycle of secret trysts, sex was a privilege he was only permitted fully clothed, breeches yanked down to his thighs. He became a _thing_ , an appendage for her to use and dismiss as she pleased, all in the name of upholding their oath.

 

And after another seven punishing solar cycles as Master Snoke’s apprentice – day upon day of physical torture under the guise of _instruction,_ and his many, many battles – Kylo’s burns and blemishes have become innumerable.

 

“Please, Ben.” His name comes out breathy, like a lover would whisper.

 

 _No,_ he thinks. Not that. He’ll have her stripped bare on all fours under him, or bowed backward over the side of his sleeper, blindfolded or his hand clamped over her eyes… but not _that_. Not offering his nude body to her like a paddy-frog pinned to an emery board for dissection. But what he mutters, shakily, is, “All right… if you want.”

 

“Okay?”

 

“Okay.” Hands trembling, he reaches for the hemline of his tunic.

 

“Gloves, too.”

 

“Can I...” Pulling off his gloves, he wrenches the tunic over his head quickly, like ripping off a bacta patch. Fast, and it’ll be over with. “Can I touch you? After?” His undertunic follows, then the vest, then his belt, tossed into a hasty pile on the floor. So many layers. It’s torturous in its own way, this artless striptease under her scrutiny. Toeing out of his boots, he yanks his leather breeches down as quickly as he can. Her eyes briefly follow each item of discarded clothing before returning to the smooth expanse of muscle he’s uncovering.

 

A timid nod, and she chews at her thumbnail. “Yes... after.” She isn’t like his dream-Rey at all. His cock twitches again inside his briefs.

 

Kylo draws himself up to his full height, arms stiff by his sides like a soldier standing at attention, feeling her gaze roam over his body, appraising.

 

“Now what?”

 

“Um...” She juts her chin toward his underwear. “You’re not finished.”

 

He’d been ready to drag her into the ‘fresher, slam her up against the tiles and fuck her senseless just weeks ago, naked or not. What’s wrong with him now? In this dreamscape, he is bereft of the Force and vulnerable in a different way – without the powerful exterior of Kylo Ren, all that remains is the soft underbelly of someone long-buried.

 

Turning his back, he obediently shucks his briefs, and they join the pile.

 

“Are you nervous?”

 

Kylo will never, _never_ admit as much to anyone. But - “Yeah.”

 

Rey falls silent for a long moment; he wonders if it’s already over. This intangible connection will dissipate, leaving him wondering where he went wrong, searching the sheets again for a warm body that isn’t there. But then he hears soft footsteps creeping closer, feels cool fingers touch his skin, tracing small shapes.

 

“I know this one,” she breathes, her fingertips drawing an inverted pyramid over his latissimus dorsi. “This is the Horns of Waryl constellation.”

 

He shivers with nervous excitement, fixating on the bulkhead behind her berth, painfully aware of his nakedness.

 

“Oh, look here!” she exclaims, and he feels her fingers make a jagged line over his right shoulder blade, featherlight. “I recognise this one, too. It’s called the Predator Beast of the Dusk. I’ve even seen it in the sky, not just in holoprojections.”

 

“Kezz’Sreik’Kuras,” he whispers, sucking in a sharp breath when he feels her lips press gently to the place where she drew. At least she’s not examining his dick right now; the thought of her staring squarely at his semi-erection is overwhelming.

 

“I like all of these,” she announces, lightly prodding his many moles. When he doesn’t reply, she tries a different kind of touch, firmer and slower. Her rough hands run all over his back, navigating every line and curve, stopping to squeeze a little when she encounters a particularly tight swell of muscle. “You’re very… uh, big. Top-heavy, I think. Would you even fit, if I tried to hug you?”

 

She tries immediately, fitting her bandaged arms around his ribcage – and he’s so broad-set, she can barely clasp her fingers together.

 

“How are you so quick on your feet?” He can hear the grin in her voice. “...When we fight?”

 

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just shrugs, feeling her hands travel up to his shoulders and grasp where his trapezius bunches, digging into the flesh. The sensation must visibly relax him, because her body heat against his back intensifies as she steps in closer and begins kneading the muscle between her fingers and thumbs.

 

It’s not real, he decides, allowing himself to unwind a fraction.

 

She mumbles something about pressure points and delayed-onset muscle soreness, but it doesn’t matter; her clever hands are finding every sore spot, rolling small circles into his shoulders until he thinks he might melt. The wave of comfort that comes from Rey’s skin is indescribable.

 

It feels good. _Too_ good. The kind of good he would gladly lull himself into a whiskey-coma every night for.

 

“Ben?”

 

She must have been massaging him for a long time, because his head has lolled forward, luxuriating in her touch. “Mmm.”

 

“Don’t panic, okay? …Could you lie down?”

 

Obey. Or she disappears.

 

“I know you’re probably too tall for this cot, but...”

 

 _Like ripping off a bandage._ Gritting his teeth, he arranges himself atop her sleeper, arms rigid again by his sides and legs together, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. That nervous tic beneath his left eye has restarted and his stupid traitorous dick is still bounding lazily, despite the humiliation to come. He’s more scarred around the front, arms and chest, from launching himself headfirst into battle more times than he can remember.

 

By the time he feels her clamber eagerly on top of him, he’s trembling everywhere. From the whisper of fabric against his naked skin, Rey is still fully clothed.

 

With no grace or finesse, she settles her bottom over his thighs and leans forward, her face close enough that her loose hair brushes against his chest. He can sense her eyes moving over him inch by inch, studying every hair and every mole. The moist heat of her breath makes his skin prickle. Trying to imagine what his abhorrent, scar-streaked body would look like through another’s eyes, he tenses when he feels her thumbs skim over the hard contours of his pectorals.

 

First on his left arm, then the right, she methodically traces the outline of each muscle and protuberant vein from shoulder to wrist. He feels her push one of his palms out flat, her much smaller hand sliding over his. “They really _are_ huge,” she murmurs.

 

“Rey...”

 

She pauses. “What?”

 

“I… nothing.”

 

“I’m enjoying this,” she assures him, completely unconcerned with his anxiety.

 

“Okay.”

 

Next, she lifts each arm in turn to her lips, pressing a soft kiss against the crease inside each wrist, the crooks of his elbows. She hums happily with every harsh breath he pulls in when her mouth touches those deliciously sensitive spots.

 

“Are you ticklish, too?” she asks, unabashed.

 

When did anyone ever want to know _that_ about him? “I… I don’t know.”

 

Her fingers glide down to his lower ribs. “Well, that’s hardly fair,” she grumbles. A wriggle of those cold little fingertips, and his whole body jerks. “I need to know these things. It’s _my_ turn now.” Flicking her fingers again and again, she chuckles softly to herself when he begins to squirm. He hates the involuntary smile that her touch elicits, the noise so close to laughter he makes when she starts to move faster, pinning him between her thighs so he can’t escape.

 

“Stop!” he barks, arching his hips. His growing arousal abuts her stomach – surely she can feel it.

 

“Say please,” she quips back, giggling as she continues her onslaught.

 

A peal of laughter escapes his throat – something he hasn’t done in years. Not since playing chasey with the damned Wookiee as a toddler. The sound echoes through the room, almost foreign to his own ears.

 

“P-please!” he titters, lurching almost hard enough to unseat her.

 

Mercifully, she stops.

 

“I’m glad you’re ticklish,” Rey announces, bouncing a little on his thighs in delight. A pause. Then, “Ben… can I kiss you… here?”

 

That warm breath again, over his left pectoral.

 

Kylo gulps. “Yes.”.

 

It’s not quite a kiss.

 

Slowly, her lips close around his nipple. He feels her tongue prod it experimentally, then swirl around it, smooth and wet. When she starts to suckle gently, he gasps.

 

Rey withdraws. “Does that hurt?”

 

“N… no.”

 

“How does it feel?”

 

Soniee never did anything like this. It’s all frightening and new; why has he left himself so vulnerable, laid out like a patient anaesthetised on a table? And yet, having her perched on top of him like this, exploring his body with unbridled enthusiasm... it’s a promising thrill that he can’t resist. It’s a dream, he reminds himself sternly. Some part of him must _want_ this helpless submission.

 

It means nothing.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Okay, you need to concentrate this time,” she replies matter-of-factly. Without warning, his right nipple is engulfed in her mouth, her hot little tongue circling his areola, flicking back and forth across the sensitive bud at the centre. Reflexively, he groans again, loud and long when she doesn’t relent.

 

“Well?”

 

“…Good.” His whole body is quivering with anticipation now. Kylo wills himself to relax, to slow his breathing, but the pressure is building – those hard planes of her belly wiggling against his dick as she pokes and prods and mouths at his chest. No scar escapes her attention, he notes – she peppers every single one with small kisses.

 

“What else feels good, Ben? What would you like?” she asks innocently, ghosting one palm down to his navel and running her fingers through the coarse trail of hair below. She tugs gently, and it’s almost unbearable.

 

 _That mouth. There._ All he can think about is those glistening, pink lips stretched around his cock. She seems incapable of sitting still.

 

“You. Just you. I want to take your clothes off, too -” it’s beyond endurance, the coarse fabric of her tunic sliding along his shaft - “and I want to touch you.”

 

“You can, if you want... later. Open your eyes.”

 

Cool air washes over his exposed torso as she plants a palm carefully on each of his collarbones and pushes herself up to straddle him. Determined to keep this dream-Rey here, he obeys immediately, expecting to see the same condescending pity in her expression that he was so accustomed to from Soniee. Or revulsion at his cobbled skin, the same sickening self-loathing that grips him every time he catches his reflection in the mirror.

 

Instead, her eyes shining with the joy of discovery, she looks down at him as if he is a birthday present waiting to be unwrapped. Letting her gaze roam across his bulky pectorals, the sharply demarcated ripples of his abdomen, she actually _smiles_ again. She seems fascinated with his chest.

 

“I like your body a lot. It’s even better up close,” she professes, nimble fingers tiptoeing down the divot between his rectus and obliques, dancing back up along the groove at the centre. “Including your scars. _Especially_ those. They make us who we are.” As if to prove her point, she leans forward again, placing a tiny kiss on the jagged line snaking across his right collarbone. _Her_ scar. “But… um, I think I’d like to explore some more before we swap places.”

 

Liquid heat floods through him at the idea of doing this to her.

 

Next, she slides down his body and turns her attention to the thick ridge of muscle above his right hip, shooting furtive glances up to his face to gauge his reaction with each exploratory kiss, every little nip.

 

“I really, _really_ like this,” she whispers between kisses, tracing the furrow all the way down to his pubic hair. “You smell good.”

 

It doesn’t tickle there, but her ministrations send warmth rushing directly to his groin. Squeezing his eyelids shut again, he tries to lose himself in the sensation.

 

“Ben?”

 

Her teeth, grazing against skin and bone – it’s _everything_. “Mmh?”

 

“Is it supposed to bob around like that?”

 

His eyes fly open, only to find her – _oh, frack_ – now staring directly at his cock. Brows creased, she props herself up a fraction to study it closer, and of course – now that he’s awash with embarrassment already – it jumps toward his belly, as if on cue. For a second, he feels like an awkward teenager again, ashamed and powerless to control the mystifying behaviour of his own body.

 

“Uh… I guess so.”

 

She ponders this. “Does it do it all the time?”

 

He wonders if Rey has ever laid eyes upon a naked man before. Perhaps she hasn’t. Perhaps that would even be for the best – to have nothing for comparison. “Only… only when you do something that feels good.”

 

“Oh!” Her face breaks into a broad grin, enlightened. “So, this feels good?” She gives his hipbone a savage bite, making him gasp.

 

“Rey - ...yeah.”

 

“It worked!” she announces proudly, fixated firmly on his dick once again. “So, would it feel just as good if I touched it?”

 

He shivers all over. “You don’t have to...” The last word comes out half-choked, because she is already sliding her small hand experimentally around the base, testing his girth. Slowly, she runs her thumb up the vein then rubs circles around the head, swiping away the pearlescent pre-cum already beaded at its slit.

 

“Lower,” he whispers. “Just… just grab it.”

 

She squeezes the base lightly, and his toes curl.

 

“It’s warm,” she observes, “and… really hard. Is it always this hard?”

 

“N… no. Just when you touch it.”

 

“Oh. Okay.” She moves her hand experimentally, her touch maddeningly light, dragging it up and down his length in a way that makes his head swim.

 

He wants more. The pressure is almost painful. “H-harder,” he growls, any attempt at self-control or modesty long gone with having her astride him, curiously caressing.

 

She grips a fraction tighter, stroking at an agonisingly slow pace. It’s too easy to forget that this is new territory for her. For them both.

 

“What about when you touch yourself?” she asks candidly. “You do, don’t you? Touch yourself?”

 

Overcome by sensation, he can barely speak, flushing to the roots of his hair as he gives a perfunctory nod. He rarely services himself beyond the necessary, but Rey, all lithe muscle and creamy skin and with no idea of how maddeningly sensual she is, keeps _making_ it necessary. More than he'll ever acknowledge. “Do… do you?” he stammers out.

 

She shoots him a devilish smirk, and just like that, he knows. She _knew_ she was being watched. Nothing escapes her.

 

Her hand alights to cradle his balls, testing their shape, then trails back up the underside of his straining cock. “The skin is different here,” she comments, all curiosity and wonder. “Like velvet.” Her fingers curl around his length again and she strokes him from root to tip – once, twice, again. When he looks down, her perfect mouth is so _close_ that it’s all he can do not to explode all over her beautiful face, right then and there. If only she understood the filthy ideas floating through his mind right now.

 

“Rey… please -”

 

“Is it… not good? Should I stop?” She’s entirely unashamed, with no concept whatsoever of his own shame.

 

Eyes rolling back into his skull, he groans and shudders. She keeps going, probably encouraged by his response. Rational awareness has deserted him, his craving for release drowning everything else out.

 

“N… no,” he hisses between breaths. “Rey – don’t stop. Harder. Keep doing what you’re doing… but… _nnngh_ -” His hips jerk again as she tightens her grip and pumps it firmly up and down the shaft, first too fast, then too slow. But he wants this. His body wants this. “ _Harder,_ ” he gasps out.

 

“But… if it’s all right, I’d like to...”

 

He feels her again, this time gently mouthing at the tip, and in that moment he could swear he sees stars.

 

“I haven’t done this before,” she admits quietly. Her hot breath _there_ is… beyond anything, and his mouth goes dry.

 

“You… you don’t have to do this now.”

 

She darts her eyes up at him playfully. “I’d like to try. I’ve seen it in, um -” she bites her lip, and there it is again – that glimmer of nervous dream-Rey, cracking through - “holovids. But you’ll need to tell me what to do.”

 

“No – _Rey._ Come here.” He wishes the words held more of a warning, instead of a whimper.

 

She’s relentless. “I’m guessing someone’s done this to you before? So you can, um, teach me?” She hums her request directly against his length - the vibration of her voice reverberates through him, liquefying his insides. His cock bounds insistently against her nose.

 

“Rey -”

 

“You said I need a teacher,” she adds boldly. He watches as she opens her mouth and drags the flat of her tongue along the length of him, swirling it around the head. “So… teach me?”

 

“I -” She laps at him again, and suddenly speech is almost impossible. Emboldened by his soft, desperate moans, she repeats the motion immediately, flicking the tip of her tongue across the ridge and probing the small slit. His hips buck up of their own volition.

 

Dream-Rey. There are rules, or she’ll disappear.

 

“Wrap your lips around your teeth,” he grits out, eyes clenched shut. This can’t be happening. The most powerful woman in the galaxy, with her slender body wedged between his bare thighs, wanting to know how he likes his cock sucked. He’s too desperate now, needing above all else to make it _happen._ “Use your tongue… not… _ah_ -” her teeth scrape the sensitive flesh of his shaft - “n… not your teeth. Suck a little…”

 

“It’s all red. And purple,” she observes, and _of course_ it’s all red, because all of the blood has rushed from his brain to his groin – but before he can answer, the sweet warmth of her mouth engulfs him completely, taking him in as deep as she can.

 

What Rey lacks in experience, she makes up for with sheer, unbridled enthusiasm.

 

He wants to stop her, to pull her away and insist that it’s _his turn_ now, but the feeling of her throat constricting around the head of his cock is making him come undone. Every time it happens, he lets out a strangled grunt and it encourages her - she tries to take him in deeper, humming with his engorged member pressed firm against her tongue in a way that sends electricity surging up his spine. Even if he’s too big to fit into her mouth properly. In a dizzy haze, he watches her head bobbing, feeling plush lips sheathe him and suck voraciously just the way he has imagined _every single fracking night_ for months -

 

She releases him with a wet pop. “You’re panting,” she comments, looking more than a little smug for her efforts.

 

“Don’t stop… Rey… please… don’t stop...”

 

With a small smirk, she slowly takes him into her mouth again, letting her thumbs swipe back and forth over his hipbones. He tells himself _not_ to weave his hands through her hair, _not_ to push her head down and thrust all the way to the back of her throat, _not_ to grunt like a debased animal while she envelops and releases him with mounting speed. He probably does all those things anyway, well beyond self-control now, his hips quaking violently in a distorted rhythm.

 

When he feels himself teetering dizzily on the brink, with his last iota of self-restraint, he grabs her shoulders and wrenches her off him.

 

Rey looks up, wide-eyed and a little hurt. But before she can ask what she did wrong – he wraps her small hand around his girth once again, dragging her fist inside his up and down, up and down, until she understands and continues on her own.

 

It takes almost nothing.

 

Rey’s hands. Rey’s mouth. Rey’s naïveté and nervousness and enthusiasm.

 

 _Rey, Rey, Rey,_ his mind screams silently as his orgasm crashes over him. Blinding, white-hot pleasure spills rich through him until there’s nothing else – just _this_. He comes hard, in one world-shattering, pulsating spasm, crying out as his whole body quakes.

 

If there are any others, they probably hear him from the opposite end of her ship – _frack_ , from the other side of the _galaxy._

 

She’s silent in the aftermath, sitting quietly at his feet while he pants and shudders.

 

Robbed of any remaining cognizance, he’s only dimly aware of her climbing back up to sit astride him again. She raises her right hand to her face, brazenly inspecting her shiny fingers where he’s certain his cum spurted all over her fist. He hadn’t warned her, he realises. But, as with everything she’s done so far, there’s no disapproval or disgust – only innocent curiosity.

 

When he regains control of his limbs again, he reaches for her. His shaking hands slide around the small of her back.

 

“What… was I… not good?” she stammers. “I thought...”

 

He shushes her with a finger to her lips. “You were perfect,” he whispers. “More than perfect. You’re exquisite.”

 

“But...” Wriggling her fingers, she examines the thick, sticky fluid dripping down her palm. She’s not entirely uneducated, he considers vaguely. “Aren’t you supposed to… you know… in, um, in my -”

 

“No.”

 

 _Humans taste karking_ revolting, _kiddo._ He remembers it well, the one and only time Soniee deigned to go down on him. Afterwards, how she’d made a show of gagging on his spend, dry-retching and spitting until he hid his face in shame, wanting to disappear, determined never to re-enact this particular encounter, ever. With anyone.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because...” _Because I want you to come back, Rey. To do it again and let me do it to you. I need to be good enough. Worthy_. But he knows she won’t be satisfied with anything less than blunt honesty. Specifics. “Because people don’t… like… uh, the taste.”

 

Frowning, she sniffs her hand the way someone might test fruit for its ripeness, then – much to his surprise – licks a broad stripe up the middle of her messy palm. Her tongue collects the pearly fluid there before she draws one finger into her mouth, sucking it thoroughly.

 

It might just be the most arousing thing he’s ever witnessed in his life.

 

“It’s not so bad,” she remarks. “It’s salty and tangy and… I don’t know, like synth-paste, maybe.”

 

His heart stutters. Watching her do this in that unpretentious way of hers has his brain addled. Useless. “Rey…”

 

“Yes, Ben?” Her lower lip glistens with his cum, and if she keeps this up, he thinks, he’ll never want to wake up.

 

“N-nothing.”

 

She must register his rapt fascination, the way his jaw falls slack and he quivers beneath her bottom when she does it - because she slowly, deliberately runs her tongue over the next finger, holding his gaze. He can only gape at her like a dumbstruck moron, transfixed.

 

The effect seems to be exactly what she is hoping for. With a devious little smile, she feeds each finger into her mouth in turn, licking herself clean. Taking her time. Her eyes never leave his.

 

_Gods, Rey. You’re going to be the death of me. There’ll be nothing left._

 

When she’s finished, she licks her lips, clearly enjoying how she can bring him so easily to this wordless, gasping state.

 

“Come here,” he implores again, tugging her down to his chest.

 

She lets him.

 

As easy as a puzzle piece slotting into place, she snuggles into his side and nestles her head comfortably in the crook of his neck. Just the slight brush of her cheek brings immeasurable warmth and comfort. When he winds his arms around her back to pull her closer, relishing the physical contact, she doesn’t squirm free or try to bat him away. Instead, she skims her free hand over every swell and groove, stopping briefly to caress his dick, now flaccid against one thigh.

 

“Ben,” she whispers, her nose tickling the angle of his jaw. It’s beautiful, how easily his discarded name rolls off her tongue. She could say it another hundred times and he would never tire of hearing it.

 

“Mmm?”

 

“What else makes you happy?”

 

He wishes he could hold her like this for always, drifting in uncomplicated pleasure. Basking in the afterglow of sexual release, her light, and her affection, so freely given.

 

 _You,_ he thinks. _Stay. Stay with me, forever._ “I don’t know.”

 

“I really like… doing this. You’re wonderful.” She lets her breath ghost over his cheek and presses a small peck to the soft spot behind his ear. “You could make me very happy.”

 

He doesn’t know how to respond to that either, so he draws her in tighter, fingers trailing lightly over her back. This tender incarnation of her isn’t like servile-Rey or domineering-Rey or the Keshiri. Her delighted exploration hasn’t left him feeling used, or unlovable. If anything, it was… _worshipful._ He’d have it again, a thousand times, just like this.

 

“Sometimes, I think… I made the wrong choice. I should have said yes.”

 

He turns his head so their noses touch. Up close, her delicate features are fuzzy and she smells divine – like fresh grass and petrichor and _Rey._

 

“But I wasn’t interested in ruling the galaxy,” she murmurs. “There’s only one thing I wanted.” As she speaks, her hand continues its unhurried journey across his skin, as if she were trying to learn every contour and dip. Her rough callouses make him tingle pleasantly all over. She is so delicate in her touch that he hungers for more, to remind him of this human part of him that he thought had died with Kylo Ren.

 

“What did you want?” he whispers.

 

“ _You_ , Ben. Just you.” Her words are hopeful, words that touch a part of Kylo that he knows only she can find.

 

Maybe now, in this delusive state without the Force, without power or responsibility… he can just _be_ Ben. For her.

 

Tilting her head a fraction, she leans in for a languid, lingering kiss, and he tastes himself on her lips. He would _kill_ to have this again. “There’s something… Ben… I can’t remember. I’m... supposed to... warn you about something...”

 

“Shh.” He kisses her again, lazily. “Let me… It’s my turn.”

 

She pouts. “But I don’t want just dreams. I don’t want more fantasies or tricks of the Force. I want you really _with_ me, in person.” Her voice is soft, almost sad.

 

“Me, too… but if this is all we have...”

 

He’s touching her. Speaking. _Demanding._

 

Breaking all the rules.

 

Her body is suddenly translucent, like a hologram. He can see straight through to the rumpled bantha-wool blanket behind her.

 

“But - it’s not _real_ ,” she whimpers, gradually fading.

 

“It could be! Come to me, Rey. I want to be your teacher.” He’s babbling now. “I want... to be with you, in any way you’ll have me. Just don’t...”

 

“...Ben? Don’t disappear...”

 

“Rey!” he cries, frantically grasping at the sleeve of her tunic – but his bare arm passes through her like fingers through water. _“_ _Rey!”_ His voice rises in a crazed plea, wracked with panic. “I’m here! I’m all yours. Just don’t… don’t shut me out.”

 

“Ben -”

 

“ _Please don’t shut me out!_ Don’t -”

 

 

~

 

 

“- don’t shut me out. Don’t shut...” The words seem to rust on his tongue.

 

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren finishes his pitiful appeal to thin air. The croaky whine of his own voice reverberating off the walls makes him cringe. Nothing but the black, featureless interior of his sleeping chamber greets his bleary eyes, stale odours of recycled oxygen and dried whiskey filling his nostrils. Someone must have found him there, unconscious, and dragged him out of the cockpit.

 

Already his temples have begun to throb, something he knows will build into a crushing hangover in the hours to come. A wave of nausea rolls over him.

 

Underneath the breeches, his groin is warm and sticky.

 

And his arms, his sleeper – empty. Cold. She’s gone, and he falls into the numbness left behind.

 

Always alone.

 

 

 


	25. Bxb6?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Panic seizes her. For every tenuous battle she has withstood, each time her life hung in the balance… Snoke… she isn't equipped for anything like this. Robbed of the Force, bereft of a weapon, prostrated helplessly before an unknown Sith Lord. Somehow he’s weakened her further, beyond the debilitating effect of the neural disruptor.

 

 

No incantation in dark side sorcery can revoke the stupidity of mankind.

  


Staring into the infinite vacuum of space, a Sith Lord who once called himself Byt Olypo watches the stars flare and realign. A tremor of his own making, perhaps, for his quest is to reconfigure the future. Only the occasional blink of homeostasis monitors and his own luminous eyes light the interior of the cockpit.

  


In his mouth, the bitter aftertaste of proteinloaf lingers.

  


In his chest, he feels the monster rising.

  


The future is a moving target. One heartbeat too late, missing that ephemeral opportunity, and it recomposes itself. One breath’s delay, and no intervention will forestall the currents. The _daesha_ he foresaw was strong and compassionate, yet when he searches the Force now, her polychromatic aura is nonexistent. The Bakura sector is as dank and desolate as everywhere else. It’s inconceivable - had he not felt _Numa_ Skywalker and every one of his padawan brethren as they crossed over?

  


Every few hours, he retrieves Kira’s photograph, caresses its creased surface with his thumb, then returns it to his pocket.

  


Should he fail, he shall join her soon.

  


Uncertainty ripples through him. The Force has ensnared him in a web of false hope. Having made it his property in endless attempts to countermand death, the dark side is reclaiming control. Why would it show him the path to salvation, only to wrest it away?

  


His senses drink in impressions from the Force. A welter of voices resonate in his mind, choruses from millennia past and decades to come. Voices raised in terror: Alderaan, the Hosnian Cataclysm, Ukio, and then countless trillions throughout the galaxy. Voices raised in praise; cheering the inauguration of Darth Sidious as Galactic Emperor; the Rebellion’s hard-won triumph on Endor; the redheaded subordinate declaring that all remaining systems will bow to the First Order. Whether they have passed or have yet to be, all send currents skittering through the cosmic energy web.

  


Sentient beings never learn. As long as they harbour a lust for power, the generations-old war will rage on until there is nothing left. Were it not for his sister and two human refugees who are unlikely to ever even speak to him, Kopecz would have abandoned this mission before it began.

  


For thirty hours and twenty-eight minutes, he has navigated solo through the Outer Rim in stilted hyperspace jumps, noting with little surprise the way other starships at the outer limits of his radar display will suddenly veer off-course and evanesce. Thirty hours and twenty-eight minutes without reciting the Sith Code, without an opportunistic kill for nourishment, and all of his skin is beginning to itch.

  


With a muttered plea to the Sith’ari for guidance, he opens his mind once more, perceiving nothing but Sinya’s dazzling luminescence in his wake – like a moon eclipsing the sun.

  


The Jedi – Rey - was Ben’s equal in the light, borne of the Force to temper the evil consuming him. His nemesis, his destiny. His _freykaa._ Why must it be the nature of mankind to procrastinate and play games while their soulmate slips through their fingers? One never cherishes what they have until it is irrevocably lost.

 

The gods offer no enlightenment, and Kopecz tries not to succumb to the cold embrace of failure while the shuttle enters the Timora system. One barren planet after another. In three standard hours his worst fears will most likely be confirmed, but he cannot quit yet. He has sacrificed too much of himself to the tenets of the dark side.

  


_Beep_

  


A green flash from the sensor suite pulls his attention away from the stars.

  


_Beep_

  


There’s a speck on the periphery of his radiolocator’s scope. A solitary spacecraft, approaching at sublightspeed. The long-range scan-mode sensor array invites him to change course or lock the target in his sights. His thumb hovers over the trigger, honing in on the vessel.

  


While its sublight engines emit no transponder code signal, the outline is unmistakeably that of a Huttese pleasure craft. Unaccompanied, illegally deidentified. What ignoramus travels alone in the current state of the galaxy, embroiled in a multifronted war? While he cannot sense any lifeforms aboard, it is still thousands of klicks away.

  


If nothing else, it could be an expedient kill. The First Order is bringing justice to the Hutts; this is no different. Kopecz can stare another couple of slavers in the eye, assault their impotent little minds until they crave nothing more than their own death, then siphon away their life energy like soup through a pipestraw.

  


_Beep_

  


Releasing the trigger, he deactivates the sensor jammer, watches the blip crawl across his screen, and simply waits.

  


He’s hungry.

  


  


~

  


  


Fortune does not smile upon Armitage Hux. Hux is an strategic mastermind, a man of science and technological innovation.

  


Hux makes his own luck.

  


Four standard weeks as a two-hundred-thousand-credit fugitive, and General Hux is just shy of reclaiming his former glory. Yesterday, he was a beggarman from the sad, ramshackle collection of shanties and urtya tents on the Pnakotic Coast.

  


For the next two standard days, he will be a faceless Guavian security soldier, complete with lightweight cybernetic armour and a burgundy faceplate. A Baleen-class heavy freighter, with a full armoury of percussive cannons and micro-grenade launchers, awaits his return to Savareen – should matters not proceed according to plan. Its communications hub was so easy to operate, a trained rat-monkey could do it; slicing into the First Order’s comms network, no less elementary.

  


He’d indulged in the on-board sonic for longer than strictly necessary to cleanse himself of every last bit of Dorna’s filth. For the time being, the scruffy hairstyle and unkempt beard will have to stay. His cheeks prickle uncomfortably. General Hux takes pride in his appearance, in a way that a wanted fugitive cannot.

  


The four corpses he had dragged inland from the village were all teeming with lice, festering with the fetor of old sweat. If Margo noticed - through the pixelated viewscreen of her vendor droid - that the Huj mat was smeared with blood and shit, however, she did not mention it.

  


For their reconnaissance mission, Crimson Dawn have provided a sleek, state-of-the art Corellian transport and two droids. Hux doesn’t know whether this is a good sign or not. Both are probably as expendable to Margo as Dorna himself, should they be accosted by the First Order en route.

  


A silver-plated protocol droid is piloting, operating from some inbuilt subroutine once Hux divulged the location of the Namadii Corridor. Not overly specific. The exact destination mustn’t be reachable without his guidance. From time to time, its vacant yellow eyes scintillate as it adjusts their course. The infernal thing politely inquired on the hour if he was having a pleasant journey, until he had to bite his knuckles to keep from sinking them into its abdomen and ripping out a fistful of loose wire.

  


Hux’s other crewmate, GL-OT15, is a dormant heap on the lounge. Every fifteen parsecs, its crimson headlight blinks once. He’s been timing it. Transmitting their route to the flagship, he surmises.

  


Both are silent now, but the general knows he will be under close observation until they sweep through the Bilbringi System and relay images of the goods back to Margo.

  


The second the idea took root in his mind, everything else quickly fell into place. In two standard days, Hux will have gained the trust and allegiance of Crimson Dawn’s leader, baited with the promise of absolute power. She who holds the weaponry, commands the Order. From the Shipyard, the transporter will take him directly to her flagship to begin negotiations. What could she possibly believe he expects by way of recompense? Having already led her to the cache, she may perceive Hux as being of little further value - even if he _could_ permeate the Order’s trifling defences.

  


It doesn’t matter.

  


Interrogating a handful of half-dead prisoners without Ren’s authorisation was a trivial indiscretion. The impertinent fool simply overreacted.

  


Presenting the First Order with a very, very big whale, however, is an act of _benevolence_.

  


In forty eight standard hours, his new freighter on Savareen will transmit a timed communiqué to the Finalizer’s primary command bridge, and he will activate his holopad communicator. All they need do is triangulate the comms unit, and its location will lead the Order directly to their most sought-after criminal figurehead. General Hux, the brightest star in the First Order’s firmament, will have found the unfindable. He will be granted accolades, and pledge fealty once again.

  


Beneath its flat-topped cranium, the vendor droid blinks its headlight again.

  


The future Supreme Leader checks his wrist-mounted chrono, and smiles.

  


  


~

  


  


“ _Don’t shut me out! Please don’t shut me out!”_

  


Moments ago she was stretched out against his naked frame, luxuriating in gentle, lingering kisses, his arms coming tight around her while her hand mapped every contour of his body, warm and solid. As if they had an eternity together. He was _her_ Ben, the man whose light so seldom peeks through chinks in Kylo Ren’s armour. She would accept whatever part of him he was willing to share. _It’s my turn,_ he’d murmured softly, and her insides quivered. In the liminal space between dreaming and waking, the intergalactic war, the Force, and every painful memory that led them to this point all seemed petty and peripheral, like a long-forgotten folktale.

  


Now, he’s fading, shouting – and there’s a peculiar bleating quality to his voice.

  


“Ben...” Her fingers sink through diaphanous flesh, all the way to the bantha-wool blanket underneath.

  


“ _Don’t shut me out! Rey! Don’t shut -”_ An electronic whine drowns out his words.

  


It isn’t time yet. Frantically, she tries to seize hold of any part of him, anchor him here with her – an arm, his waist, his hair. But like wafting her fingers through mist, nothing finds purchase.

  


She bites back a sudden swell of tears. Ben’s frenzied pleas are falling out of sync with the siren. “I’m not ready,” she whispers in his ear, clutching at nothing. “Don’t disappear. I want to stay asleep. I want to stay here, with you.”

  


He mouths the words again – _don’t shut me out_ – but the proximity alarm is overpowering them, and he’s almost translucent, just a spectre in her imagination, and then…

  


She wakes.

  


It wasn’t real. Another crinking dream, her stupid kriffing mind torturing her with images of everything she will never have. Waking alone yet again, feeling numb and inert. What _is_ real is the necklet indenting her collarbones, the scalding tears streaming down her cheeks and soaking into the pillow, and that she’s lying atop her berth like an idiot while the collision avoidance system’s siren blares, warning of imminent impact.

  


Frack.

  


Scrambling to her feet, Rey scrubs roughly at her face and scampers into the cockpit. From here, the Klaxon is almost deafening and the astrogator panel and homeostasis monitors are lit up like a Life Day tree, flashing red and blue. A quick survey of the electronic log assures her that nothing is already damaged, and the navicomputer shows the PLY-3000 remains on course, midway between Bri’n and the periphery of the Bakura Sector, past Timora.

  


It’s too soon to have garnered unwanted attention. It should have been safe to nap. Her yacht has cruised on autopilot for less than three standard hours, automatically slipping out of lightspeed when it detected the proximity of another vessel. She’s barely one-fifth of the way to her planned destination – the Maw Cluster near Kessel - to uncollar herself and reach out through the bond, ostensibly to save the Resistance. Tease out how close he’s already come to locating their base.

  


Not to _warn_ him.

  


Sniffling, she wipes her puffy eyes again, remembering how perfectly she fit under his chin, one thick arm coiled tightly around her back. How vulnerable he made himself to her, and how vital and cherished she felt, nestled against him.

  


_Maybe_ to warn him. Just a little. And plead for the lives of Poe’s attack squadron.

  


Checking the deflector shield generator – still active – Rey turns her attention to the radar. There is indeed a single starship on approach; a thousand klicks away, according to the sensor array. Seven minutes to impact. It makes no sense. If the HoloNet News is accurate, travelling alone through space right now, in the midst of hostility between criminal cartels, is a fool’s errand. Her only saving grace is that her vessel is of Huttese origin, won by Lando Calrissian on Dirama over a hand of sabacc, and no passing marauders would dare provoke the Hutts.

  


It was supposed to have been so simple – straight up, complete the mission, straight down again. Back with her friends within three standard days.

  


The siren bleats. Six minutes. In the vast expanse of space, collision is rarely a risk unless one craft deliberately charges the other. Scaling back the sublight thrusters, she powers up the proton torpedo launchers in case she needs to attack. For an instant, the shuttle’s interior dims.

  


Seconds later, the oncoming starship’s schematics wink onto the sensor display, the PLY’s computers automatically initiating a risk assessment of its weaponry and shields.

  


An Upsilon-class command shuttle.

  


Unable to believe her eyes, Rey rises from the pilot’s chair and stares in dread at the tiny speck through the viewport. On the screen below, the image zooms in on its heavy laser cannons, one below each folded wing, with reams of foreign text scrawling alongside it. Surely it cannot be -

  


_Ben?_ she thinks. _Is that you?_

  


She’s still dangerously close to base camp… if he hasn’t pinpointed their location through the Force already. Will he bypass her yacht, unable to discern her presence with the collar? Open fire? Should she shoot first, try to disable his craft?

  


“Ben!” she cries, searching blindly for the astral thread.

  


The damned neural disruptor blocks her. No pulsing red vein, no otherworldly connection. She feels trapped, like a firefly in a jar; immured from the Force. She can’t reach out to him while she’s enfeebled like this.

  


Four minutes. The transporter’s headlight is now the size of a decicred ingot, running on a collision course with her yacht.

  


Trying to ignore the deafening alarm while the navicomputer calculates and recalculates the impending threat, Rey rummages in her pocket for Kaydel’s remote control. Her fingers recognise its familiar shape and she depresses the switch immediately, awash with relief.

  


Nothing happens. No telltale click. The choker remains firmly in place.

  


Raising the device to her face, she pounds it again.

  


It doesn’t work.

  


Suppressing a rising panic, her right hand grasps the collar and tugs savagely while her left thumb hammers the release, again and again. It won’t budge.

  


The Klaxon wails louder; three minutes. Collision imminent. The transporter’s size now approximates a grav-ball. It isn't attacking, but it's too close. Much too close.

  


Heart pounding, Rey seizes the control yoke, heaving the PLY into a steep dive. She needs to fix this. Buy herself more time.

  


One last stricken glance at the oncoming craft – now disappearing over the rim of the transparisteel viewport – and she bolts for the service hatch. This yacht is substantially better equipped than her starhopper had been; tools and components spilling out everywhere in a disorganised pile. Selecting a narrow-tipped fusion pen, she makes quick work of dismantling the device.

  


A cursory survey reveals no obvious defect. Flat battery, maybe? She _has_ attached and removed the collar many times – more than, she imagines, its intended use. Why hadn’t she had the good sense to commandeer Poe’s spare remote? Scrabbling through the assortment of parts, she mentally inventories anything that might substitute as a power source. It’s taking too long.

  


The alarm crescendos. Altering her trajectory has done nothing to put distance between her and the First Order shuttle. Still no incoming laserfire. It must be giving pursuit. The ceiling-mounted fluorescent lights flicker wildly. In desperation, she yanks at the collar again, trying to pry its edges apart with her fingers. It’s too late. Her course has been a direct beeline from Bri’n; any starship navicomputer could easily backtrace it to the last of the Resistance.

  


If they’re giving chase, she has no choice now but to run. She can’t open fire. There’s no way of knowing it isn’t Ben.

  


Screaming internally, Rey sets down the fusion pen and flies back to the controls.

  


Zero klicks. Dread settles low and tight in the pit of her stomach. They’re right on top of her. Her eyes fall to the display, widening in alarm: schematics of the enemy ship overlying her PLY-3000.

  


Hoping to disengage, she reaches for the controls – and immediately retracts her hand as a violet strand of electricity arcs from them. At the same instant, a tremor takes hold of the yacht. Not violent enough for a collision at speed. No, this is something else. Another glance at the readout reveals a close-up representation of the airlock; the craft has tethered itself to her like a hungry mynock.

  


That’s when the screen goes dead, the Klaxon silences, and all the lights wink out.

  


Riding the last sputterings of its dying ion engine, the PLY decelerates until it is floating aimlessly through space with an enemy vessel attached. Tangles of electrical energy cascade across its control panel and monitoring systems overhead, strobing and clawing in a terrifying lightshow. A faint undertone of coaxium and burning circuitry fills the air.

  


Her gaze fixed on the airlock, Rey backs away, draws the hood of her cloak over her head and grips Master Skywalker’s lightsaber with white knuckles.

  


Seconds later, driven by some external force, the airlock's pneumatic panels slide open.

  


The creature that barrels through is not Ben.

  


It’s giantlike – so colossal, it is forced to crouch to cross the adjoining hatch, and when it unfurls to full height, its hood barely clears the ceiling. And it’s featureless; a walking epicentre of darkness, wreathed in shadow underneath the oversized cloak hanging loosely from its rangy frame.

  


It appears to survey the hull’s interior, its gaze resting briefly on Rey and dismissing her just as quickly. Next, it scans the narrow access tunnel to the pilot’s and guests’ cabins, sequestered behind the communal space.

  


“Where are your masters, human?” Its deep basso rushes through her blood like ice. A male officer, maybe, but something about its nefarious aura – even without the Force – tells her this is something much ghastlier.

  


“I -” her thumb hovers over the activator - “I am master of this ship.”

  


Ignoring her, he turns and disappears into the tunnel with inhuman speed, much too rapidly for her eyes to track.

  


She only has time for a single step forward before the being reappears.

  


“ _Where are your masters?!”_ he thunders, making her flinch.

  


Rey cannot – will not – show fear. “ _I_ am master of this ship!” Her fingers tighten around the lightsaber. “Leave, at once!”

  


He cocks his head appraisingly. _“You’re_ with the Hutts? _Kee baatu baatu_ – how are you hiding from me? What are you? A slaver? Spicerunner? Whoremistress? ... _Murishani_?”

  


“Get off my ship,” she grits out, heart pounding.

  


“No, Huttslaver.” His atramentous cloak sweeps across the decking as he advances, slowly. “Your kind are the scourge of the galaxy… and I am _famished_.”

  


Squaring her shoulders, she ignites Skywalker’s blade and lifts it overhead. “Get. Off. My. Ship.” 

  


He hesitates for a beat. “From whom did you take that weapon?”

  


“Leave immediately, and I will not harm you.”

  


“Then you shall rot alone in wild space. Your craft is inoperative.” Unfettered by her threat, he advances another pace. “I have seen to it. Tell me who you killed for that lightsaber.”

  


“Don’t come any closer.” Zones two and three, she decides, assessing her foe. Or the legs. Too tall for a head chop. Adopting the Juyo stance, Rey prepares to unleash chaos.

  


He raises a hand. “Hutt-spawn, you shall beg mercy before I slay you with that very weapon.”

  


With that, an unseen power wrenches away her lightsaber so brutally, she is forced to unclasp her fingers lest she lose them along with it.

  


He must sense her reaching for Pla Ren’s saber, because a second later the hilt is yanked from her opposite fist with equal ferocity, tumbling through the air toward his waiting palm.

  


His interest piqued, the intruder raises his head a little – and she sees them, laser-focused, shining out from the darkness.

  


Incandescent, red-rimmed golden eyes.

  


Sith eyes.

  


Master Skywalker’s Sacred Texts explicitly stated the Sith Order had died out with Vader and Sidious. This _thing_ cannot possibly exist. And still he towers over her, terrifying to behold and now holding both her weapons.

  


Eyeing the airlock in horror, she wonders if the Rule of Two still holds. Whether there’s a second Sith Lord aboard that command shuttle. Master, or apprentice.

  


“Who did you kill for these weapons?” it rumbles again, inspecting them.

  


This isn’t over. She’s far from vulnerable. Her staff and quick reflexes had felled more assailants than she can remember on Jakku. A full solar cycle of hand-to-hand combat sparring with Finn, and more recently, eight others simultaneously - herself unarmed and collared as a handicap – has moulded her into a vicious fighter. There are more ways than one to take down an opponent. This demon incarnate is unconventionally tall, almost skeletal. His centre of gravity will be high. Easy to unbalance if she is swift and sharp, and catches him off-guard. He’s underestimated her already. Shoot first, or die.

  


Teeth gritted, she charges.

  


Everything happens in a blur.

  


One instant, she rushes at him. The next, barbed fingers uncoil in a leisurely wave across her face. His gesture alone sends her body plummeting to the deck, crumpled like a puppet suddenly released of its strings.

  


She knows she will faint when her stomach gives out. It feels like her innards are being replaced by some kind of black hole. Then, nausea creeps from her abdomen to her head, and everything goes black.

  


  


~

  


  


Life is grand.

  


As a veteran of the Imperial Starfleet, it prides Yago whenever the First Order unleashes the full extent of its power to expand its dominion.

  


Being next in the line of succession to said dominion, is even better.

  


Captain Yago stands on the gleaming black bridge of the First Order Star Destroyer Finalizer, gazing out at the grey-green swamp planet hanging in space. His predecessor, General Hux, was overly preoccupied with the already-ailing Resistance.

  


Until Centaxday, Nal Hutta was an overlooked haven for the criminal elements of the galaxy, the homeworld of a race of fat, cumbersome slugs that had somehow managed to command the entire Outer Rim. By Zhellday, his army had taken Bilbousa, the capital. As of today, the planet is a stronghold of the First Order, overrun by Stormtroopers and Self-Propelled Heavy Artillery Turbolasers, its skies swarming with TIE-fighters. Their business: liberation and resettlement of slaves, imprisoning the Hutts, and quashing the illicit drug trade throughout the Outer Rim. At zero-nine-hundred hours, Commander Weel declared victory.

  


Perchance the Supreme Leader is not so deranged after all. The First Order may yet fulfil the vision the Galactic Empire had struggled to achieve.

  


Conversely, Lord Ren _does_ spend all his waking hours on-world, risking his own safety by fighting right alongside his underlings. It’s a miracle that he isn’t dead already. He _is_ very young, has a penchant for violence and likes getting his hands dirty. Now is a very, _very_ good time to be second-in-command.

  


Three more Star Destroyers hang in orbit above Nal Hutta, below its asteroid ring. A dozen others, together with hundreds of support frigates, are scattered throughout Huttspace. No doubt, off-world Hutt settlements will continue to surrender in the coming days as their options crumble. The command bridge itself is a model of efficiency, with controllers and monitors constantly exchanging reports from the battlecruiser’s targeting computers and sensor suites. They have already received declarations of surrender from four major capitals today: three from the Hutts, one from the Pyke Syndicate on Oba Diah. All were music to his ears.

  


“Captain!” calls a comms hub monitor from the bridge pit. “Incoming message from the pickups, sir.”

  


_Ah,_ sweet surrender. He's beginning to enjoy this. “Patch them through, Sig.”

  


“Negative, sir… the signal is too weak. It’s unencrypted… and there’s no audio component.” The officer pauses. “It’s a two-dimensional picture, sir.”

  


Disappointed, his shoulders slump a little. Hearing their sycophantic pleas is always so much more satisfying. “From where does it originate?”

  


“Unknown, Captain.”

  


“Upload the image to a datapad, Sig, and bring it to me.”

  


The fusillade of tiny rose-gold flashes lighting the distant planet’s stratosphere tells him the slimy pieces of worm-ridden filth are most likely making a last stand. The Hutts are not beneath sacrificing themselves to launch explosive-laden craft in desperate times such as these. It will be fruitless, he knows, but an entertaining spectacle for the bridge crew nonetheless.

  


Minutes later, a breathless signaller hands over a datapad for his perusal.

  


  


**HEREIN IS A GIFT**

**FOR SUPREME LEADER KYLO REN**

  


  


Raising a dubious eyebrow, Yago turns the display this way and that, hunting for the remainder of the transmission. Interesting, indeed. Such clandestine missives are almost always business dealings between criminal organisations, and more recently, conspiring among themselves to overthrow the Order. Their little schemes never fail to amuse him; with twenty land-based ‘Trooper training posts and starship manufacture in the Unknown Regions, the First Order army currently stands at least twenty million strong – probably more than thirty. This message, however, is an enigma.

  


The captain rereads it, squinting at the boldface text. Nothing like a good, meaty conspiracy to unravel. When Lord Ren emerges from his chambers, he will see this at once. 

  


The Supreme Leader wants for nothing, and gifts are never given without an expectation of reciprocity.

  


  


~

  


  


_“Wonoksh Qyâsik nun Wonoksh Qyâsik nun Wonoksh Qyâsik nun -”_

  


Rey comes out of the fog slowly, her eyes heavy-lidded and sluggish. Taking inventory of her surroundings, she observes two undefined globules of light orbiting a central shadow, one green, one red. She’s unable to shift, a dull throbbing behind her eye sockets; all she can manage is minuscule movements. A finger twitch, a weak swallow. There’s been a gravitic shift; her body seems to weigh a tonne.

  


Wincing, she strains to open her uncooperative eyelids, letting more and more light slip through. The lit panels soar closer and further away with a low-pitched drone, undercut by rhythmic chanting in an unknown language, a voice so deep it could not possibly be human.

  


With a low groan, she turns toward the sound and the chanting abruptly stops.

  


The shadow floats closer, sucking in all ambient light.

  


“ _Cheeskar nok.”_ That voice again, harsh with a lilting accent, spoken by an unseen lifeform. 

  


Dipping her chin, she recognises the rim of her bulky neural disruptor encircling her throat. Through unfocused eyesight, she can make out a black-cloaked monolith whose hood abuts the ceiling, arms folded under bell sleeves, his cowl raised to cover his eyes. From this angle, sprawled at his feet, his unnatural height seems to stretch for an eternity. A fluorescent green beam whizzes across him with an electronic howl.

  


_Master Skywalker’s saber._

  


“Hey, tha’ss...” she protests, but her lips refuse to form words.

  


Luke’s weapon is followed by the Kel Dor’s, revolving in front of the creature and disappearing again behind its back.

  


“How many of my people have you slain, Hutt-spawn?” he snarls. “How many of your own?”

  


“Wha… Husspawn?” she repeats, willing the room to stop spinning. Only the ice-blue point of his chin juts out from the cowl, unveiling razor-sharp needles for teeth every time he speaks. He’s the demon, she remembers faintly – the Sith Lord who invaded her starship. By some miracle, he hasn’t slaughtered her already. “Juss because of the ship…? I’m not...” 

  


Unclasping his hands – one sprouting knobbly, clawed talons and one robotic, he summons the lightsabers from their strange orbit, smacking into each palm. “If one does not imbibe the culture, one will not succeed. _Mi killie.”_

  


In a lifetime of scavenging and bargaining for portions at Niima Outpost, Rey has gleaned a limited vocabulary from several hundred languages, though she is fluent in none. This, she knows. It’s Huttese.

  


_I kill you._

  


“N… no! You’re mistaken.” she slurs. Her body slumps against the polished decking, and try as she might, all she can manage is to lift herself to her elbows. “I’m not with the Hutts -”

  


“I have tasted of your life force, slaver, and it is magnificent,” he croons, thin lips retracting in a sneer. “But you are a petty thief, and before I shear your selfish heart asunder with your stolen weapons, you shall tell me where you pilfered them.”

  


Glaring at the beast, Rey strikes out with the Force instinctively, directly at his stomach.

  


Nothing.

  


Her consciousness clarifies, and the final piece clicks into place. The Resistance, the cursed collar, Poe’s planned attack, Kylo Ren’s threats, and then -

  


“They’re _mine_ and this is _my_ ship and...” she stammers, peering up at her captor like a lamb to the slaughter. She might as well be commanding a pole-snake to uncoil from its prey, for all the impact it has. “Get off my ship before I… I...”

  


Wry amusement colours his voice. “Before you _what,_ human?”

  


Shaking away his hood, two thick head-tails spill out onto his shoulders. His cranium is smooth, hairless and covered in esoteric markings, striped azure skin pinched over haggard features. While Rey has seen Twi’leks before, haggling for scrap on Jakku, never has she laid eyes upon one so freakishly tall – or so emaciated. He cants his head ever so slightly, close-set eyes brimming with menace. The sabers paint ghostly hues over his body, like a harlequin; green to the right, scarlet to the left.

  


“Get off my ship,” Rey demands again, barely above a whisper.

  


He strides forward, and only then, realisation sinks in.

  


Panic seizes her. For every tenuous battle she has withstood, each time her life hung in the balance… Snoke… she isn't equipped for anything like this. Robbed of the Force, bereft of a weapon, prostrated helplessly before an unknown Sith Lord. Somehow he’s weakened her further, beyond the debilitating effect of the neural disruptor.

  


Trying to remain calm is useless. Those feral eyes seem to bore into her soul, playing complete and utter havoc with any attempt at logical thought. What would the Sacred Texts advise? Something about attentive listening. Calming techniques. Keep him talking. What does he still need?

  


“What do you know about my weapons?” she hazards. With her last ounce of strength, she shoves herself into a sitting position, legs still splayed on the deck.

  


His eyes flash with such fire, she almost regrets her question.

  


“This -” he raises his mechanical arm aloft, the viridescent beam sparking against duralloy - “belonged to Luke Skywalker of Tatooine, the last Jedi Knight of his generation. And _this_ -” plunging Pla Ren’s saber into the ceiling alongside it, he begins burning a molten hole - “was my brother’s. _Nerra_ Pla Nel of Dorin.” The Twi’lek’s head-tails slither about his chest. “Both of infinitely greater value than whatever price _you_ would demand, slaver.”

  


“You’ll breach the pressure -”

  


“ _Stop wasting my time!_ ” In a single, fluid motion, the Sith Lord lunges at her, all black shadow and rage. With his face so menacingly close, all she can see is stippled, turquoise skin and twin points of lurid yellow.

  


“Why can’t I read your mind?” he seethes. Those serrated teeth – close enough to bite her. “How are you hiding from me?”

  


She swallows hard, fighting to keep the tremor out of her voice. “What do you want -”

  


“ _Tell me where you thieved the lightsabers!”_ The walls rattle with his roar. All of the air seems to be sucked from the hull.

  


“If… if I tell you...” Her mind races. Maybe, if she is fast enough, she can throttle him. Or swing a well-aimed punch to the trachea. Take him by surprise. _If_ she can lift her arms. “Let me go. I don’t work for the Hutts.”

  


“Tell me,” he insists again, his hot breath moist on her cheek.

  


Jutting her chin in feigned stubbornness, she stares squarely into his eyes. Sweat gathers at the nape of her neck. “Spare me,” she counters.

  


Withdrawing a little – _can’t reach his throat any more… think, Rey… think!_ \- he deftly, deliberately scissors the blades, levelling them at her jawline. Their stuttering buzz fills her ears, sparks showering from the crosspoint and biting at her skin where they strike. She wills herself not to wince.

  


Should he run them together, he will behead her in an instant.

  


An eerie stillness settles between them for long, agonising minutes. Mortal and Sith Lord glare at each other unflinchingly, eyes locked in a charged stand-off, neither willing to give so much as a millimetre.

  


“Your name,” he growls finally. “ _Just_ your name. If you comply, I will kill you quickly.” The crosspoint edges a fraction closer to her windpipe, the blades’ scorching heat intensifying. “If you refuse… then I shall be slow. I sense your shatterpoints, human.”

  


The instant the threat falls from his lips, something resonates deep within her sacrum and at the base of her skull, sickening and just shy of painful. A warning, perhaps, that whatever this ungodly creature is doing, he can make it worse. _Much_ worse. Unbidden, she lets out a whimper, perspiration beading across her brow.

  


Starpilots say the instant before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes.

  


It’s not like that at all.

  


It’s faces. Memories. Moments with the people she loves. Leia’s wisdom and generosity, her mentor in more than just the Sacred Texts, attuned to the Force but firmly grounded in reality. It’s Chewie’s trademark hugs, being swamped in a shaggy mountain of Wookiee fur. It’s Finn’s hundred-watt smile whenever she challenges him to a duel, or one of his trainees strikes bullseye for the first time, or when he wraps Rose in his arms and sweeps her off her feet.

  


And it’s Ben. How the light seeps into his liquid-umber eyes when he looks at her - not just like she’s someone, but like she’s _everything._ This soft, warm thing they have, precious and unspoken; a bone-deep intimacy she had never thought possible between two people. A destiny unrealised, always apart, always a mirage of the Force. The way he touches her, reverently, as though she might shatter if he isn’t careful. It’s the way his flushed lips part and the muscles cord in his neck and his whole body shudders when he climaxes. She can’t know that - it was only a dream. Only, somehow… she _does_. It felt so real.

  


It's the promise of a future growing bright between them, in the calm cradle of the Force. Of neither ever having to be alone again.

  


She loved it. All of it. _The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead._

  


She won’t let him die. Not by Poe’s hand, or Chewbacca’s, or anyone’s.

  


They haven’t had their time together yet.

  


Perhaps she can outsmart the creature; appeal to his code of honour. It’s her only hope.

  


“Take this off!” she demands, hauling up one impossibly leaden arm to flick at the collar. Sweat trickles down her face, her breaths rapid and shallow. 

  


For all of his false accusations, strangely, the Sith Lord seems to be struggling the most with not knowing her identity. His brow furrows in obvious confliction, but his hands do not falter. _“Your name.”_

  


“Remove this at once! ...or... I’m not giving you anything.”

  


His lips draw into a tight, angry line. “I pray you have made peace with whichever gods you worship, Hutt-spawn,” he mutters, barely audible above the crackling blades.

  


“I will not die collared like a domestic pet!” she spits back.

  


With a forbearing sigh, the Twi'lek gives a nod, infinitesimally small – and the necklet bursts open, metal fragments clattering onto the deck. 

  


Time seems to slow down.

  


Oblivious to what he has just done, he prepares for a killing stroke.

  


All at once, the Force floods through her like a dam rupturing, an empty vessel suddenly filled to overflowing. Everything snaps into focus. Through her newfound sight, her enemy transforms: an inky darkness inset with flaming eyes like twin suns - disconcertingly familiar, somehow. The kyber crystals at the heart of his lit sabers seem to screech, a wail she feels in her bones. 

  


With a flick of her fingertips, a concentrated blast of pure energy surges from her and ploughs into the Sith Lord, ripping both lightsabers from his grasp. Both strike bulkhead panels at either end of the vestibule, extinguishing on impact. Force blast is a skill Rey has never before attempted; thank the stars she hasn’t torn the shuttle apart. He crashes heavily to the deck, huffs out a grunt, and lies still.

  


Harnessing a power she will never again allow herself to forfeit, she flings up both hands to summon her sabers. They rise as the Force calls to them, then come hurtling toward her outstretched fingers in a perfect arc. A sob of giddy relief rises up in her chest as they strike. The impact propels her as she backpedals across the deck, legs quivering, away from her oppressor.

  


He stirs.

  


Trembling violently, Rey stuffs the hilts into her belt and turns to the wall, her hands grappling at the duralloy framework to stagger to her feet. Gravity has at least quadrupled. She’s perilously unsturdy, her knees wobbling like jelly. Standing upright without the bulkhead for support is out of the question.

  


A shuffling noise behind her, and her breath catches.

  


This beast is insurmountably strong. His dark power hangs so thickly in the air, she can almost taste it.

  


It takes all her effort to stop her legs from buckling underneath her, and he’s already ransacking her mind, his consciousness a live, hungry thing. No less aggressive than Snoke. Now that she is free of the collar, his presence behind her feels tumultuous, an inky aura heaving and churning through the hull.

  


Shielding her thoughts, she deliberates how to subdue him. In her current state, a lightsaber duel would be certain defeat. Does she dare pit her Force abilities against his own, wave him unconscious or trap him in suspended animation? Sever his head-tails, perhaps? Dazzle him with a Jedi mind-trick? Noone is invincible.

  


“You need do none of that… _daesha_ ,” comes a deep basso at her back, gentler this time.

  


Fingers clutching the railing, she manoeuvres her body around to face the enemy. Steadying breaths, she tells herself. She has the Force. She can take him now. 

  


What she witnesses leaves her stunned.

  


His gargantuan figure is hunched at her feet, knees folded under him in supplication. While she watches in shocked disbelief, he prostrates himself in a slave’s bow, arms outstretched, until his forehead touches the deck. 

  


“Forgive me,” he murmurs. “Forgive me, my queen.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Huttese Translations:**  
>  _Cheeskar nok_ = Betrayer scum  
>  _Murishani_ = bounty-hunter  
>  _Kee baatu baatu_ = You bother me
> 
>  **Twi'leki/Ryl Translations:**  
>  _Freykaa_ = beloved  
>  _Daesha_ = queen/female ruler


	26. ...Bxc4+

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven days without her is beginning to tear at the edges of his self-control. She thrilled him. Provoked him. Broke him. Gods, the unconscionable things he’d shown her – acts of violence and depravity so heinous, she would sacrifice the Force to keep him out. If he could take it all back, he would in a heartbeat.

 

 

_\- Kylo -_

  


Her voice blows past his ear, low and thready.

  


It startles his mind blank. Nothing but a figment of a dream. After seven days thrashing at the bond, Kylo is almost certain that whatever aberration his former master created has finally nullified itself. Like the phantom ache of a severed limb, he can't escape the awful sensation that part of him is missing. By now, as one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, he should have been able to force his way through.

  


Most likely _she_ has sabotaged it, shutting him out with her neural disruptor and hobbling herself in the process. Whatever fragile thing they had will be lost forever to unforgiving reality.

  


Seven days without her is beginning to tear at the edges of his self-control. She thrilled him. Provoked him. Broke him. Gods, the unconscionable things he’d shown her – acts of violence and depravity so heinous, she would sacrifice the Force to keep him out. If he could take it all back, he would in a heartbeat.

  


He steadfastly ignores the goosebumps erupting down his arms, the way the steady cadence of marching and the hum of ion engines suddenly deadens in his ears. It _can’t be_. Jostling past the bodies crowding the passageway, Kylo stares fixedly ahead. Now is no time for hallucinations or fond nostalgia. Now is the time for action. Orders trumpet from the speakers overhead and his officers’ comlinks in an endless litany, but everything sounds as if he were listening underwater.

  


“First wave for deployment in t-minus twenty minutes -”

  


“Omega Leader, standing by.”

  


“Zeta Ace – all units -”

  


_\- Kylo -_

  


“Conqueror combat bridge. Base within range. Fire when ready -”

  


The dizzy rush of the Force twisting on itself does little to calm his hectic thoughts. Coming to an abrupt halt, he braces one hand against the wall and waves Yago and Weel on ahead. The entire battlecruiser is abuzz with activity. He has precious minutes, if that.

  


“I can’t do this now,” he mutters to his boots, softly enough that any stray passersby won’t hear.

  


Rey’s voice wavers breathlessly. “You don’t need to talk. Just listen – I don’t have much time.”

  


Gloved hands balling into fists, he concentrates on the deck, ignoring the headache swelling his skull. He _can't_ look up into her eyes, face the woman who mounted him so unabashedly and kissed his disfigured body like it meant something. It was a karking _dream_. A squadron of armoured fighter pilots trots past in single file, unconcerned in their haste with the Supreme Leader frozen like a statue in the middle of the gangway.

  


“In a week – maybe more – your fleet will be attacked. Ten X-wing starfighters. Each will target one battlecruiser.”

  


“Rey -”

  


“ _Listen!”_

  


_I’m listening,_ he thinks bitterly. _An X-wing versus a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. Your ace pilot is truly delusional._

  


“If they make it aboard, each pilot will plant a viral bomb for remote detonation,” she continues in a rush, as if this were a well-rehearsed speech. “If any one of them succeeds, it’ll be lethal to the whole crew.”

  


The muffled background noise from his ship warns they’re already out of time. A ricochet of clipped orders, synchronised marching, the whine of TIE fighter thrusters.

  


“And he’s not _my_ kriffing ace pilot,” she adds indignantly.

  


“What are you, an informant now?” he retorts. “You’ve made your allegiances perfectly clear. If you’re so conflicted, Rey, call them off.”

  


He can feel her shirk from his cold tone. A fraught silence hangs between them for a beat, and when she speaks again, she sounds close to tears. “I can’t. They’re unreachable, and even if I could… they’ve already assumed...”

  


_I’m a traitor,_ she finishes through the bond.

  


His eyes snap up in heated surprise.

  


What he sees makes his temper evaporate in an instant. For the first time, he can see everything, projected over the stark deck-grating and illumination panels of the gangway.

  


The sleek vestibule of a modern shuttle, decking polished to a high shine, its plush lounge seats upholstered in silk. Woven tapestries and oil paintings adorn the walls. Its cavernous interior is dimly lit, its only light source from an open hatch. The odour of molten plasteel permeates his nostrils, mingled with fear and sweat and ozone.

  


This illusion of coexisting in dual locations, one overlain on another, is giddying. Is this how it's been for her all along?

  


Several paces away, Rey slumps against the wall, sweat-drenched, her loose chestnut hair clinging to her brow, a mess of trembling limbs and heaving shoulders. Three lightsabers hang from her belt; one double the length of the others, black and intricately patterned with gold filigree. There’s something disconcertingly familiar about it. Her fingers clutch at the duralloy framework behind her, white-knuckled, legs barely solid enough to support her weight.

  


The neural disruptor collar is gone. In its place, the graceful curve of her neck is dotted with tiny red wheals.

  


Laying eyes on her now, the alternate reality of the Finalizer ceases to exist. Impending battles, blaring speakers and the officers bustling past, probably presuming the Supreme Leader is mad for staring at the wall and whispering to himself.

  


_I can see your surroundings, Rey. The ship. Everything._

  


“You… you can?”

  


_What happened?_ he asks gently.

  


Chancing a step closer, he imagines grasping both her wrists and bodily hauling her through the bond, into the safety of his ship.

  


“I’m safe,” she whispers, looking anything but. Her thoughts are soaked in fatigue, her beautiful hazel eyes puffy and fogged over.

  


“Where are you?” 

  


“No. There’s more you need to hear.” Her focus shifts to the open hatch beyond him. “The others – the Resistance colony – they didn’t condone the attack. It was an reckless act, by a desperate few. Kylo… please don’t hurt them. The pilots… or our base.”

  


His reply is grim. _They won’t make it through the shields. The perimeter defences will blast them to pieces._

  


“Stolen clearance codes,” she counters. “They’ll make it through.”

  


“They won’t. We have many enemies. Security is paramount. Your friends are walking into a trap of their own making.”

  


“Does the whole First Order know where we’re stationed?” she blurts out, wide-eyed.

  


She must have come to understand at some point, he realises. Through the bond, they’re incapable of lying to each other.

  


“No,” he admits. “I... sensed you in the Bakura Sector, but beyond that… no.”

  


He catches stray wisp of thought – _but he knew exactly where to find me_ – but she chooses not to elaborate, instead pleading aloud.

  


“Then - promise me. Promise me you won’t hurt them. Our pilots. Our home. Promise me.” With every word, her voice grows louder, more frantic.

  


“You choose to align yourself with terrorists.” Training his gaze over her craft, he seeks out any clue to her location. The sensor suite and ceiling-mounted pill lights are all dead. “If the First Order is threatened, we _will_ retaliate.”

  


“You don’t understand.”

  


The sadness on her face is achingly soft, and hurts to look at.

  


“You’re asking the impossible! You _know_ I won’t -”

  


Then he sees it move, and the words die on his tongue.

  


Something black and amorphous lurks beside the mouth of the airlock, shrouding out all ambient light. The thick miasma it exudes sends chills down his backbone. At its centre, two red-rimmed golden orbs blaze like a binary sunset, fiery and hyper-focused.

  


Watching him.

  


Watching _them._

  


Blissfully ignorant, a line of Stormtroopers marches straight through it in perfect synchrony. Not one falters in their rhythm as they traverse the void.

  


“ _Get out!_ ” Rey snaps at the shadow, but he feels her anxiety spike, fear bleeding into the bond.

  


Slowly, he stalks toward it, tracking its movement with his eyes and feeling the air temperature plunge.

  


That’s when he knows.

  


He knows where he’s seen that gilded saberstaff before.

  


“ _I said, GET OUT!”_ she shrieks again.

  


Pinning it with a glare, Kylo snatches up his own weapon. Through the bond, he won’t be able to cause injury – but if nothing else, he will make his intent perfectly clear. He would slay armies to keep her safe. Raze entire worlds. Everything else can burn.

  


“I know who you are,” he hisses at its bloodshot eyes.

  


The gloom hovers in the air before him, not shifting or speaking.

  


“If you touch her, _nerra,_ ” he adds quietly, “I’ll kill you.”

  


Behind him, he hears her gasp. “He’s… he’s one of _yours?_ ”

  


Glowering, he slowly turns back to face her.

  


“ _You_ sent him?!” Rey accuses.

  


_I didn’t,_ he thinks. _But you’re strong enough to cope._

  


“My lord?” Lieutenant Stridan is standing inches from his face, eyeballing him with suspicion. “We launch in t-minus twelve minutes, sir.”

  


_Yes, Kylo. I am._

  


All at once, his eardrums pull from the inside, heat and sound flooding back in a rush. A wave of nausea rolls over him. The shadow dissolves into the gangway's reflective surface, and with it, Rey, her darkened vessel, everything.

  


His wrist-mounted comlink shrills - “Epsilon team, standing by.”

  


“ _Wait!_ ” he cries into the void. His body is on fire, stumbling, smacking into the wall and narrowly avoiding a passing sternly garbed officer, whose arm snaps into a salute.

  


Gingerly, Stridan reaches out to steady him. The officer’s thoughts are an anxious muddle – impatient to climb into the cockpit of his waiting dropship, debating the Supreme Leader’s sanity, wondering if he will be throttled again for his efforts.

  


“All troopers, prepare for boarding,” blares the comms speaker.

  


“FN Corps to Hangar Three. KL Corps to Hangar Six -”

  


His entire battalion awaits their leader.

  


There isn’t time.

  


Whatever Kopecz Ren wants with her, he doesn’t possess even one-tenth of Rey’s ability, Kylo chides himself uneasily. As rattled as she appeared – she was holding his lightsaber. She's hardly helpless. And - after cajoling him at every opportunity to follow his heart, it seems ludicrous the Twi’lek might consider harming her. Invoking Kylo’s wrath would be certain death. He'd watched him slaughter Thalaam without a second thought.

  


But… Kopecz hadn’t known, back then; who she is, what she represents. Champion of the light side of the Force. Nemesis of the First Order, and the Sith. 

  


Ploughing forward through a rush of oncoming bodies, Kylo tries to banish the thought and charges after Stridan with renewed vigour. Today, thousands will surrender or die by his blade. He will be twice as brutal, twice as merciless, finish this twice as quickly. And when his army emerges from battle, victorious – Rey can hide from him no longer.

  


He will sit through the procession of grovelling dignitaries, pledging allegiance to the First Order by holoprojection. Do his duty. Then he will harness the Force, reach out to the universe.

  


He’ll find her.

  


It only occurs to him when he storms into the hangar: she didn’t use his name. 

  


  


~

  


  


“Deploy all available units to the Bilbringi Shipyard,” the Supreme Leader barks without breaking stride.

  


Mentally cataloguing their armada – half stationed over Hutt Space, another quarter bound for the Abrion Sector, Yago retrieves the offered datapad and hurries to keep pace. “Right away, my lord.”

  


He never would have guessed. Since the Battle of Yavin, modern encryption systems have rendered steganography obsolete. Lord Ren is something of a genius. He’d recognised the code immediately, had the scuttle team run it through the central intelligence mainframe using the names of all known felons, fugitives and criminal syndicates as the key phrase.

  


The passkey – Crimson Dawn. And there it was, laid out in painstaking detail: his gift.

  


A cheer erupts among the ‘troopers as Ren bursts into the airdock.

  


Tens of thousands of them fill each hangar, aligned in immaculate formation. Every section proudly upraises a crimson banner emblazoned with the First Order’s insignia. Today marks the final battle against the Hutt organisation – their last remaining citadels in the Si’Klaata Cluster.

  


The First Order’s strikes have been quick, methodical and merciless. The opening salvo is a firestorm of turbolaser blasts, instantly reducing any Huttese strongholds to explosion craters. Once two or three Star Destroyers have done the brunt of the damage, TIE fighters swarm the skies like hornets; armoured transports and legions of troopers crawl across the planet surface. No enemy’s paltry defences ever stand a chance against the full force of the Order.

  


Lord Ren himself will join the infantry, as always. In the beginning, when holovids of his kills were simulcast wide over the HoloNet to impel remote Hutt colonies to surrender, watching them always turned Yago’s stomach a little. Ren’s rage is terrifying to behold; more butchery than swordplay.

  


“Alert me immediately of the capture. The prisoner is to be brought here. I will deal with them myself.”

  


“Yes, my lord.”

  


Satisfied, Ren turns sharply on his heel and mounts the podium with quiet confidence; a tall, caped figure silhouetted against the spray of stars. Perhaps it’s his regal bearing or imposing stature, but for a split second, Yago is taken by a sense of déjà vu. In Ren, he sees something of his former master – the esteemed Emperor Palpatine.

  


The Supreme Leader’s rousing eve-of-battle speeches are becoming legendary, backed by a passion he was sorely lacking through his first solar cycle of sovereignty. General Hux’s diatribe on Starkiller Base cannot hold a candle to these. With the sweet promise of victory - a virtual guarantee, given their sheer numbers - his army roars louder every time.

  


Today will be exceptional. The First Order will surpass the Galactic Empire, the Republic, and all that came before.

  


  


~

  


  


Never has one man harboured such intense hatred for a bot.

  


It was probably cheap.

  


Just hours away from reclaiming his former glory with the First Order, Armitage Hux finds himself at the mercy of a silver-plated protocol droid as his transporter lurches between asteroids and other debris littered through space.

  


Without doubt, the 3PO unit piloting is constantly calculating the probability of collision down to the nearest hundredth of a millimetre, yet every time something soars perilously close, Hux cringes behind his faceplate and braces for a strike. The noisome bot seems more concerned with maintaining the proper etiquette than safeguarding their craft – and Hux’s life.

  


He stares with open disdain at its unblinking eyes.

  


For the past hour he has paced the shuttle, checking his chrono periodically and trying not to debate the madness of this entire charade. The silence is deafening. GL-OT15’s reappearance was a good sign; Margo’s lack of direct communication was not.

  


By now, he assumes, they will have pursuants. Two standard hours ago, his freighter on Savareen would have broadcast his preloaded communiqué, and he subtly slipped a hand into the pocket of his cybernetic armour, activating the First Order-issue holopad by touch alone. Precisely timed to the second. If either droid registered the foreign signal, they did not respond.

  


“Are you having a pleasant flight, sir?” the pilot inquires, oblivious to the lump of space junk - vaguely resembling a repulsorlift cycler - flashing past the viewport.

  


Ignoring both the vacuous bot and the hazard outside, Hux’s gaze slides back to the heap of cybernetic limbs and wiring still winking its headlight dumbly on the lounge. “ETA to destination, Threepio?”

  


“ETA two minutes, sir.”

  


“You ought to rouse your colleague, in that case. Madam will be expecting images of the goods.”

  


Just over a klick away, an asteroid marginally larger than their shuttle smacks into a jagged block of duracrete, both shattering noiselessly into minute fragments. Hux affords the pilot a sneer as he hears them pelt into the exterior of the duralloy hull, biting back the urge to short-circuit the damn thing and take over.

  


“And raise the deflector shields,” he adds acerbically.

  


“Sir, the possibility of successfully evading every obstacle is approximately three thousand six hundred and thirty to one,” it chirps.

  


His gut clenches. “Better with shields up.”

  


“Excuse me, sir, but I have my orders.”

  


For a fleeting moment, Hux ponders whether Margo ever intended for him to complete this mission alive and unscathed. Maybe Crimson Dawn is less than thrilled about welcoming an interloper into their fold. Assigning only two droids as crew is not a good omen – but then, he has yet to earn her trust. That is coming. Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. Surely she must understand that without her precious Wolfid Dorna’s insider knowledge and expertise, the Order’s defences will be impenetrable. In less than a minute and a half, she will have visual confirmation to that fact.

  


His eyes dart to the sensor array, seeking any sign of their First Order pursuer. Nothing. They must be stealthed.

  


Another metallic clang. This one will have dented the hull for certain.

  


“Shields,” he gripes, deliberating whether to supersede the mindless junk-bucket and flick the switch himself.

  


“I’m having difficulty verifying your statement, sir.”

  


Behind him, he hears the tell-tale whir of electronic systems rebooting, followed by the creak of old hinges coming out of stasis. Drawing a deep breath, he bites the inside of his cheek and roots himself to the spot, resolving to refrain from interfering. For now. It’s the black vendor droid, as expected, readying itself to capture the images that will cement General Hux’s exoneration.

  


The image looming ahead, however, makes his heart stop.

  


He sees the asteroid Bilbringi VII, shelves of dockyard platforms, and an assortment of ancient-looking cargo ships with rounded fronts and jagged rears, each larger than a Siege Dreadnought.

  


And…

  


Three modern Xi-class light shuttles, a Nebulon-K, a Star Destroyer.

  


_Overkill, you moron,_ he thinks with a scowl.

  


That thick-headed lunatic has mounted defences too soon. Had his directive to Ren been unclear? Stealthed tracking, he’d demanded - identify his Corellian transport at the shipyard and trace its pathway to Crimson Dawn’s yacht, where Hux would purportedly be negotiating terms with their kingpin. The Supreme Leader’s ineptitude is astounding. Now, all that Kylo Ren will come away with is a disposable transport and two droids -

  


A sudden searing pain banishes all thought. Two barbs stab into his lower back and his entire body stiffens.

  


The next moment, rigid as a plank and convulsing, he slams into the deck.

  


The knock to the skull leaves him dazed, but the white-hot flash of pain wrenches him back to reality just as quickly. Every muscle is excruciatingly tight, from his jaw to his chest to the tips of his cramping toes. Eyes bulging, he scarcely registers two thin, metallic cables running from his spine to the device GL-OT15 holds in one plated hand.

  


_Caraya’s soul_ –

  


“ _Guh – gii – youuu -_ ” His locked jaw refuses to cooperate, tongue rammed between his teeth. The back of his head hammers into the deck grating in a staccato rhythm.

  


Through the fog, Hux hears the shuttle’s ion thrusters powering down.

  


His lungs are burning. Tingling skin, like pinpricks. Every part of him twitches uncontrollably. His muscles are on fire.

  


“Her High Exaltedness, the great Margo the Imroosian, has decreed that Armitage Hux is to be handed over to the custody of the First Order upon arrival at our destination,” the 3PO unit deadpans.

  


Boots drumming against duralloy grating, Hux forces his gaze away from the ceiling to his assailant. The vendor droid’s crimson headlight blinks innocuously beneath its flat-topped cranium, but it says nothing.

  


“Mm – Mm – _Maaaar – goh._..” he stutters, features frozen by the pulses of current ripping through his facial muscles. _“Whaaa -”_

  


“A supercharged taser, sir,” the silver-plated unit answers amicably, still drifting the craft straight toward his captors. “My orders were clear. Deliver the merchandise alive.”

  


Something sour and rancid fills his mouth. Bile. Blood, from a bitten tongue. The tightness in his throat releases into a different kind of dread.

  


His Guavian faceplate feels suffocating now, the air trapped beneath it thick and stifling – if only his diaphragm would allow him to take a breath. Saliva or sweat trickles from his open mouth, globules of it beading in his beard. A warm wetness blooms across his groin along with the pungent odour of ammonia. Limbs rigid, every muscle taut and fasciculating, he trains his eyes wildly to the pilot. His vision narrows to a single point.

  


For his entire life, General Hux has suffered plenty at the hands of a drunkard father and two volatile Supreme Leaders. But _this_ …

  


This just might be _hell._

  


“Are you having a pleasant flight, sir?” the pilot chimes politely.

  


  


~

  


  


Kneeling in the darkened alcove, Kylo Ren stares into the vacant eye sockets of his grandfather’s visage, surrounded by four black walls, in the midst of a black silence.

  


What shall tonight’s confession be?

  


The way he hurled his enemies to their deaths with a massive energy blast from his own outstretched hands, watching them explode in a crackle of armoured debris?

  


How effortlessly his lightsaber cleaved through flesh, with barely any resistance against the blade?

  


That just a concentrated stare can dissolve an armed adversary into thin air, like grains of sand in the wind?

  


The silence screams with his sin; unnatural, void, refusing to be filled to prolong his suffering.

  


“Forgive me.”

  


The trail of mangled, lifeless corpses he left in his wake, as mundane and insignificant in death as in life. The way he'd tried and failed to rein himself in.

  


Those few he allowed to live, the stunned reverence painted across their faces as they crashed to their knees in surrender.

  


How he’d departed Kintan restless, unsatiated, the monster within clamouring for more.

  


How, upon returning to his quarters, he’d shrunk away from the blood-streaked creature leering back at him through the ‘fresher mirror, horrified by his own cracked reflection.

  


Silence lingers in the air, thick and heavy like a blanket. Wherever Kylo moves, the silence follows. Always watching, never fading. His own personal shadow. In this moment, he does not feel powerful.

  


He feels diminished.

  


A pitiful excuse for a man, confessing again to an inanimate mass of melted plasteel. Sacrificing his humanity to a dark power that takes and takes until there’s nothing left.

  


_I fear I was mistaken._ Snoke’s words reverberate between his ears, full of repugnance and degradation. Master Snoke, who’d slithered into the depths of his consciousness and seen a weakling. _You’re just a child… in a mask._

  


“I’m lost.”

  


Darth Vader’s helmet, twisted into a mockery of its former self, offers neither comfort nor moral opprobium. With every passing day since Snoke’s death, it seems to grow more lifeless.

  


“I feel it. The darkness – it’s growing. It’s hungry. And I’m… I’m afraid.”

  


Fragments of thought, splinters of words and droplets of silence spin into a kaleidoscopic jumble. Burying his face in his hands, he grinds his teeth against the knot of tears forming in his throat.

  


Not in front of Vader.

  


Elsewhere aboard the Finalizer, his men are toasting their victory. They have finally quashed the galaxy’s most notorious criminal organisation – whose atrocities had gone unpunished for generations - and claimed all of Hutt Space for the First Order. Strident music from an autojuke and the cacophony of their merrymaking echo throughout the battlecruiser, and even isolated in his private quarters now, Kylo senses their mirth and carousing through the Force. 

  


On the table beside his sleeper is a half-full bottle of Tevraki whiskey. Later, he will imbibe every last drop, drink himself into oblivion.

  


To sleep. Perchance, to dream.

  


And somewhere, meandering through wild space, Rey’s lustrous Force signature flares alongside his Knight’s like a supernova outshining a black hole. Free of the neural disruptor now, but still stubbornly, resolutely shutting him out. The sting of rejection - that sense of childish abandonment - had been enough for him to give up the search.

  


He thinks of his mother, who died keeping hope alive, losing everyone she loved in the process; his father, sacrificing his life so that Ben might reclaim his own. He imagines Luke, living out the last years of his life in self-imposed exile, hiding from the Force in shame after Ben’s betrayal. And Snoke, the exalted master for whom Ben Solo rewrote everything he was. 

  


Four lives he has taken – and for nothing.

  


He wants his mask again. To be faceless. He’s rudderless without a mentor, someone to reassure him that all of this has a purpose. A familiar self-loathing claws at his throat. Reshaping a galaxy of his own design, one free from crime and slavery and famine, seems too much for one man – and he’s already cracking at the seams.

  


He doesn’t know what he wants.

  


“I can’t do it,” he murmurs into his palms. “I can’t go on alone.” 

  


The one and only time Grandfather’s helmet answered him, it intoned suspiciously like Master Snoke. 

  


This time - 

  


“ _I will always be with you.”_

  


The gentleness of her voice makes his head spin. 

  


“ _...my son.”_

  


Kylo freezes, eyes flying open to near-darkness.

  


At first, she is nothing more than a chill in the air, a shimmer of mist, diffuse. Through it, the sharp angles of polished obsidian and duralloy become slightly out of focus, like a poor holoprojection. It isn’t until Kylo blinks away the tears clouding his vision that it congeals into a figure; a petite woman with shimmering brown eyes, diaphanous skin, a warm-hearted smile. Someone who once loved him.

  


Princess. Senator. General.

  


_Leia._

  


Her clothes are odd – a sweeping, white velvoid gown he does not recognise, her interlaced fingers adorned with jewels, including the opalescent promise ring he knows to be hidden beneath Vader’s helmet.

  


The apparition speaks again, not with the rasping tones of a weathered, time-worn militant, but the softer, familiar voice of her younger years. That voice he once knew so well, contained close around him and still overwhelming.

  


“It is incredibly brave, what you’re doing.”

  


He lets the familiar lilt wash over him, feeling his heart squeeze in his throat.

  


“You make me proud.” Leia’s smile broadens, and she drifts closer without taking a step. “There’s still light in you, Ben. I know it.”

  


A Force ghost, like the ones described in the old scriptures. He had dismissed them as metaphors – or myths.

  


The wave of realisation is nearly paralysing, but as Kylo opens his mouth to scream, he instead stammers out the one word he’s forbidden himself to utter for two thirds of his life.

  


“M – _Mother._ ”

  


Levitating an inch above the polished decking, her translucent figure wafts close, very close.

  


“I love you. I’ll always love you.” The words come out in a puff of cold, white and billowing from her lips. “So many of your predecessors claimed wisdom and prestige, only to use it for their own selfish pursuits.”

  


Reaching out, she smooths a stray lock of hair away from his forehead. Her touch tingles across his skin like an electrostatic charge.

  


“But you, my son, are different."

  


Still frozen in a crouch before Vader, his muscles refuse to move. Kylo can only gape, awestruck, at the woman he once adored, who lifted him in her arms and sang to him and taught him to name all the stars in the sky.

  


“I – I’m no different.” His voice nearly breaks on the words. “I’m a monster.”

  


“No. You’re not a monster.”

  


A swirling uneasiness simmers to the surface. “You sent me away.”

  


“I did – and there hasn’t been a single day since that I haven’t regretted it. Was it you, or I, who stumbled first?”

  


“I... killed you,” he whispers.

  


“No, Ben. You didn’t. It wasn’t you – I know that.”

  


“I… I tried…” He chokes back a sob. “I tried… Mother… to – to take it back.”

  


The phantasm’s pallid eyes sparkle. “I felt it. But I never wanted that. Death isn't the opposite of life - it's a part of it. I’m with the Force now… Luke… your father.”

  


“I murdered Han Solo. I’ve killed… so many.”

  


“Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself, and look to the future.” She meets his gaze steadily. “Nothing’s impossible. Not even now. How many lives have you _saved_ , these past weeks? How many have you freed from slavery? How many starving colonies will thrive now, because of you?”

  


He swallows back the heaviness her words impart, fresh tears pricking at his eyelids.

  


“Life is too precious to dwell on the past.”

  


Leia reaches out again to cup his cheek, her delicate fingers cool against his face. It takes a moment for Kylo to remember to breathe.

  


“The galaxy has not lost all hope, my son. The spark arises - in you.”

  


Part of him wants to tell her that he loved her, too; to beg forgiveness for his father, and the Jedi temple, and all of it. Before the hallucination ends. Before this strange conduit between the living and the netherworld rights itself.

  


But what he chokes out is, “ _Help me._ Please.”

  


Still smiling, she slowly shakes her head. “You don’t need my help, Ben.”

  


Her eyes crinkle up at the corners, and she speaks again with calming certainty.

  


“You have everything you need.”

  


 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quote:** Aristotle "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet."
> 
> I am so *ridiculously excited* about Chapter 27, I'd wanted to skip this one - but our beta said no. Housekeeping before debauchery. Happy Easter, everyone!


	27. Ke1 Bb4+

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not like… last time.” Ben’s subtle Chandrilan accent drawls a little heavier on each syllable in a way that makes her heart race. “It was different – fighting you on Starkiller and Seregar, to sparring through the bond. A thousand times more exhilarating. More physical. More _real._ I want this, too. I want to feel you.”

 

 

_Take it back, daesha. Take it all back. Take more, if you so desire._

  


How she had shrunk in horror from his offered talon. Grasping those barbed fingers to siphon back her life force, tainted with his, seemed unnervingly intimate for a stranger. Especially one hell-bent on killing her a minute ago. Draining someone that way was an ancient Sith ability, and even if she _could_ do it - a lifelong addiction, if her readings were accurate.

  


Kylo wouldn’t listen. Even worse, reopening the bond had drawn back the Sith creature like a magnet, enthralled by the anomaly in the Force.

  


Dithering like this, aboard dead weight tethered to an enemy shuttle, is only delaying the inevitable. The last thing she wants to do is go with him. Those eyes. Those _teeth_.

  


Except -

  


“Honey, we’re leaving.”

  


Except there’s no home to return to any more.

  


Of _course_ they’re leaving. People don’t wait for little Rey of Jakku.

  


“You’re… you’re _what?”_

  


Kaydel’s brusque tone chimes from the speaker. “We put it to a vote. Sit tight and wait, or take action. We’re packing up camp as we speak.”

  


Her comlink is probably the sole piece of machinery aboard this extravagant, smouldering wreck that still works. And if a Knight of Ren could pinpoint her location so easily, she can only presume the entire First Order navy will be close on his heels after Poe’s incursion.

  


“You’re fully fuelled, right, Rey?”

  


That weight, the one that has been pressing into her stomach since she left Bri’n alone, sinks a just little heavier. The knight’s ionic attack left nothing intact. In the main hold, her practised eye had picked out the locations of antenna coils, manoeuvring repulsors, static discharge couplings; things she would have eagerly salvaged a lifetime ago. Every fibre of her being demanded they be pieced apart and bargained for rations, but on closer inspection, all are ruined. Both engines are damaged irreparably, the hyperdrive, melted; wiring and conduits fried inside their protective jacketing. In the cockpit, the deck is slippery where Pla Ren’s lightsaber burning through the cabinspace unleashed cascades of fire-suppressant foam from the ceiling aerosols.

  


Sith lords don’t do things by halves.

  


“...Hun?”

  


Her gaze travels from the jetstream meditation pool to the still-smoking atrogator panel to the single ominous light source where, on the other side, a head-tailed demon incarnate awaits. Ready to uncouple. All the mechanical expertise in the galaxy can’t avert this nightmare now.

  


“Still here.” Her voice comes out whispery and broken.

  


“Rey? Is something wrong?”

  


She can’t give up yet. Perhaps, mid-flight, she could commandeer his shuttle, disable its transponders and follow the Resistance fleet. Knock him out, jettison him into space. Or – if the creature continues to grovel – demand that he deposit her on some neutral world, erase his memory with a simple mind-trick the moment they make planetfall.

  


_It is my honour to chariot my queen to her king. Gather what you must and join me._

  


Or let herself be escorted directly to the Finalizer and Kylo Ren, walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order. Objectively, it’s an insane thought. If Skywalker considered the idea so preposterous, fat lot of good _she’ll_ do.

  


Perhaps this is just a normal day. A continuation of her shipwreck of a life.

  


“I’m… just glad to hear your voice.”

  


A pause. “Have you, uh, _spoken_ with Kylo yet? Does he know where we are?”

  


“He doesn’t. But… others do.” She worries at her lower lip. Maybe the Resistance _is_ doomed. Maybe Rey has doomed all her friends, because she isn’t strong enough. Guilt curdles in her stomach at the thought. “I don’t know if you’ve been compromised.”

  


Kaydel’s tone is tight, controlled, but she can hear an edge to it. “Others? Who?”

  


“You’re safe, I promise. At least, until Poe’s attack.”

  


The Twi’lek had seemed oddly offended by her refusal to suck away his strength. Still cowed at her feet, he’d offered up his saberstaff instead.

  


_My ignorance is unforgivable. I’d thought you the daesha’s killer. Take it. My gift to you._

  


Hot-faced, trembling and near-hysterical, she’d snatched it up, belted it and ordered him off her yacht. The unfamiliar heavy heft of his weapon makes her girdle sag at the hip; a long, ink-black cylinder that dwarfs the two sabers hanging alongside it .

  


“Well… we’re hightailing it the pfassk off this rock before our distinguished general brands us all as targets again. I’m not putting all our lives on the line for a couple of diehards. Set your navicomputer for -”

  


“ _Don’t tell me!_ ” Rey interrupts, eyes fixed on the open airlock.

  


“Rey? What’s happening? Are you all right?”

  


“I…”

  


She shudders, picturing the maniacal grin that stretched his maw.

  


_If I may be so bold, my queen, Kylo Ren is a lucky man._

  


While he’d left her unscathed, the creature’s forbearance will only hold out for so long. His mounting impatience roils through the Force, like a subvocal harmonic vibrating at the edge of her consciousness.

  


“I can’t know where you’re going, Lieutenant, in case my thoughts betray us both. I won’t risk putting my friends in the path of the First Order again.”

  


“We could intercept you en route, if you need help?” Kaydel’s voice shrills. “You’re only a standard day out. We’re not leaving our Jedi knight behind. ”

  


Pushing away from the wall, Rey tests her balance unsupported. The exhaustion runs down to her bones; she’s utterly depleted. Her body sways precariously on numbed legs, but if she shuffles, she thinks she’ll make the airlock.

  


“No. Go. Be safe.”

  


“Honey -”

  


“ _Go_ , and may the Force be with you.”

  


Kaydel huffs out something that sounds like an irritated _fine_. “And with you. Comm me as soon as you’re ready. I’ll be waiting.”

  


The comlink’s low electrical buzzing falls silent. For a second, the darkened interior of the main hold is quiet and serene, and Rey tries to take that into herself. Relax every muscle, one by one, temples to toes. Slip into the stillness of the Force. Breathe in, hold the charred-smelling air in her lungs for as long as possible, exhale. Repeat.

  


Then, fingers skirting the framework for support, she shambles toward the light source.

  


Almost immediately, her knees buckle and give way, sending her careening to the deck.

  


  


~

  


 

Growing up, distinguishing right from wrong was simple. A fair trade for scrap; brave Resistance heroes; donning the helmet and daydreaming of becoming a pilot. Good. The First Order, skin traders with their vulgar proposals, ill-tempered Crolutes who would rather have her starve than part with dirt-cheap quarter portions. Evil. 

  


Rey doesn’t know when the line separating the two became blurry. Experience seems to have warped her moral compass. 

  


“Is there another?” 

  


Kopecz’s strong brow rises slowly in suspicion. “Another?” 

  


“Another… like you. Master, or apprentice.” Unconsciously, one hand slides to her belt, to the haft of Skywalker’s lightsaber. 

  


“You speak of the Rule of Two? No. Like yourself, I am both master and apprentice,” he replies placidly. “Adherence to tradition is not the sole pathway to mastery of the Force.” 

  


She shouldn’t think like this, shouldn’t humanise him, but it’s getting harder to remember. When she expressed reservations about facing Kylo Ren, he’d seemed sincerely bewildered. If not for the jarring colour of his eyes, she might almost consider them kind. 

  


“The Force is neither dark nor light. It simply _is_. That is the way of things. Any distinction between good and evil requires a judge, and who among us may claim such judicial superiority? When one always knows what is right, where is freedom? No one knowingly chooses the wrong, my queen. Uncertainty sets us free." 

  


She idly traces the length of Skywalker’s weapon. “Respectfully, I don’t practise the teachings of the dark side.” 

 

“Respectfully, _daesha,_ the Jedi order is nothing but a spiritual edification founded on lies. They would enforce selflessness and asceticism - and still fall in love, engage in battle and avenge their masters with an ardour forbidden by their own ideologies. They aspired to be something they were not.” 

  


Rey squirms uneasily. “I’m not a Jed -… I don’t know what I am.” 

  


“No mortal mind can know all there is to be known about the Force.” A rueful smile lights his face. “But my poor manners shame me. Forgive me for preaching. Have you tested my saberstaff yet?” 

  


Turning it to catch the light, Rey examines the delicate gold filigree etched across its surface. “It looks too… intricate… for a weapon. You must have been proud to have created something so beautiful.” 

  


He chuckles, a sonorous rumble that resonates through the deck. “Surely you jest. There is a phrikite training dummy in the storage hold, should you wish to -” 

  


“Why surrender it?” she interrupts. “This weapon is your life.” 

  


“Would you have otherwise come willingly, after my reckless behaviour? A concordance of fealty, if you will. Besides, lightsaber duelling is such a tedious affair. The Force is my weapon.” 

  


Great. First accosting her, then dismissing all of her Jedi training as time wasted, and finally, denigrating her weapons. 

  


As soon as the thought crosses her mind, Kopecz crooks another grin, bearing rows of atrocious teeth. She wishes he wouldn’t do that. 

  


“It is yours,” he insists. “Try it. See if it is to your liking.” 

  


Their relationship had begun as one of begrudging acceptance. Too frail to manoeuvre through the airlock, she’d had no alternative but to accept his help, leaning on his sturdy frame more heavily than she was comfortable with. The servile Twi’lek offered his robe for warmth, then insisted she retire to his sleeping chamber to rekindle her strength. 

  


His enormous bed was untouched. She wonders if he ever sleeps. 

  


It might have been boredom, disorientation or a longing for companionship the shape of which she couldn’t quite grasp, but after twelve hours of solid, dreamless sleep, she’d crept into the cockpit.

  


Which is how she finds herself here, curled up in the cabinspace: an almost-but-not-quite Jedi, chatting with a devotee of the dark side as amicably as two grav-ball fans discussing the game. Would-be murderer aside, his companionship is tolerable. The tranquillity he exudes in soft pulses through the Force is unlike anything she has experienced before, even with Leia. Its effect is strangely calming. In other circumstances, she might even have found him likeable, she’s loath to admit, despite the eerie sensation of him fretting at the periphery of her mind. 

  


If anything, he seems glad for the company.

  


“One’s silence speaks loudly, _ma daesha_.”

  


Taking another sip from her thermajug of lukewarm caf, she eyes him over the rim and tries to shake herself awake. “How did you come to serve Kylo Ren?”

  


“He was my brother.” His voice is disarmingly gentle.

  


“Was?” Though her memory is still murky, she can almost recall him calling someone else the same. Pla Ren, the psychotic Kel Dor… whom she’d left to rot inside the temple. “You studied on Tython? As one of Master Skywalker’s padawans?”

  


“Indeed, _daesha._ As did Pla Ren. And I bear you no ill will for defending yourself.”

  


She shoots him a scathing glance. “Get out of my head.” 

  


Without argument, he obeys. It’s not a withdrawal she senses, exactly; more of a gradual lightening, like an insidious presence leaving the room. 

  


“You don’t look like a Jedi,” she hazards. 

  


“Presume not that I am the thing I once was,” he intones, quirking an eyebrow. “Is a person defined by their appearance?” 

  


Heat crawls from her cheeks to the tips of her ears. “Well, no, but -” 

  


“The youngest of our class at the sacred praxeum, an Aqualish, was even smaller of stature than yourself.” His gaze falls to middle distance, as if there’s something there she can’t see. “Far from the mythical archetype of a Jedi knight, yet in combat sparring, he could upend any one of us with ease.” 

  


Had she gathered together this student's personal effects among the ruins, knelt and prayed before his gravestone? At some point, she imagines, there would have been an ultimatum. Turn to the dark side, or be slaughtered at the hands of their brother. 

  


How could anyone make such a choice? 

  


“No single doctrine is without its flaws,” he proclaims, and she senses those spidery tendrils of his consciousness again, caressing faintly. “To refute passion is to deny our existence.” 

  


“There is no passion, there is serenity,” she recites. 

  


“Peace is a lie; there is only passion,” he counters. “It lies in all of us; the source of our finest moments. Passion rules us all, and we obey.” His tone remains dry and precise, but his expression is as bleak as an open grave. “The joy of love. The clarity of hatred. The ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we’d be truly dead.” 

  


In the distant reaches of her memory, an image of torn parchment resurfaces. _Attachment is forbidden._

  


Kopecz cocks an eye at her. His mind is a jumble of whispered prayers and mad ravings; as soon as she’s able to catch a strand of thought and follow it anywhere, it’s like getting sucked under and starting to drown. If he senses her subtle probing, however, he says nothing. 

  


The silence drags on and on. 

  


“You have a rare and marvellous spirit, Rey. Not without fear, but stronger than fear. You will stare the dragon in the eye and never falter. And, know this: you are not a prisoner. If you so wish, I shall return to your clan on Bri’n at once and take my leave.” 

  


She shifts uneasily, her gaze finding a bony jawline, bags under bloodshot eyes, exhaustion built into his azure skin. Eventually, even stars burn out. 

  


“…but I beseech you to reconsider.” 

  


Nothing remains for her, no clan waiting – but she buries the thought deep down, where probing minds can’t access it. 

  


_Kylo Ren is evil,_ she thinks instead. _You don’t know. You didn’t see._

  


“Ah, but Rey – it’s what _you_ didn’t see. Our Supreme Leader is not the person you think. My lord singlehandedly slew an entire army in the desert by Mesa Outpost. He fought to exhaustion to save the lives of a slave settlement. Two of them, my kin. And when he regained consciousness, the first word from his lips was your name.” 

  


The pause after this is so long, she chances a rebuttal. “He showed me… terrible things.” 

  


She doesn’t miss the way his hands clench into fists. 

  


“You would denounce your beloved on just a sliver of knowledge? The darkness is selfish, malicious and power-hungry; Kylo Ren is none of those things. Not any more. Snoke was just the beginning. If you doubt me, ask him yourself. My lord is a changed man, my queen. And it is you – _you,_ Rey-from-nowhere – who instigated that change. You are his guiding star.” 

  


On the astrogator panel, their course to the Finalizer is clearly mapped. A route they’ll keep plodding at sublightspeed unless she puts an end to it soon. But without the Resistance, where else can she go? 

  


“Speak with him again, _daesha,_ if it will allay your fears.” 

  


A shiver runs through her. “I can’t.” 

  


“Whyever not?” 

  


“Because… you’ll...” Unable to formulate a coherent answer, she taps a finger to her temple. 

  


“I’ll – _oh_.” His face falls, head-tails rippling in waves. “Forgive me. I meant no transgression aboard your spacecraft. Your ability to invoke an otherworldly presence is… spellbinding. I had discounted Force bonds as folklore, the stuff of myth and legend.” 

  


“You’ll hear every word we say,” she presses. 

  


Calmly, he presents an open palm. “Give me your comlink, then. Through electrical devices, outside my line of sight, I cannot perceive one’s train of thought.” 

  


She considers his offer, determined to take stock of her situation pragmatically. Negotiating with Kylo Ren will be inevitable. Better here, from millions of parsecs away, than aboard his flagship. No doubt he already knows she is with his knight. If she wants to broker mercy for Poe’s squadron, threatening to redirect their command shuttle away from the Finalizer might gain her some leverage. 

  


Without a word, she hands over the device. 

  


“ _Daesha,_ our Supreme Leader did not send me for you.” He inputs a sequence into its tiny keypad, then holds it out to her. “I came of my own volition.” 

  


“Why?” 

  


“Need you ask?” Rey sneaks another glance at his face; there’s nothing there but focus and determination. “Because the future is yet in our power.” 

 

  


~ 

  


  


Her strength returns in full force on the second day, leaving her restless. 

  


After an hour of Finn’s isometric exercises and pacing circles about the main hold, it dawns on her what she really craves: training. To spar with a lightsaber. Physical exertion will help blow away the fog and frustration that has enveloped her. And here, there will be no disapproving piscine indigenes or malevolent visitations to contend with – just her blade, as much around her as a part of her, thrumming and spinning. 

  


Hauling the dusty training dummy from a storage hatch, she positions its platform in the centre of the chamber and unclips Kopecz’s weapon. 

  


Might as well gain a little proficiency now. She’s neglected sparring for long enough. Especially since, too soon for comfort, she could be faced with… it doesn’t bear thinking about. 

  


The saberstaff feels different in her hands to Luke’s. Heavier, more cumbersome. For a second, she imagines its length whirling deftly about mechanical fingers… or circling a central shadow, like a red giant orbiting a black hole. 

  


She gives it an experimental spin, igniting the double blades simultaneously and marvelling at the vibrant crimson trail they carve through the air with a low-pitched, satisfying hum. If she is swift, she’s convinced she could swing them in one precise arc and slice the phrikite figure clean in half. 

  


“ _Vatak’ultuka, freetaa tal’kan.” Fight on tomorrow, brave penis. Their laughter echoes metallic off the walls. Her pronunciation’s all wrong again; deliberately so, he suspects. He adores her for it._

  


_Pinning him to the ground, she whispers in his ear so the others won’t hear. “Afa eskaa’lia tun, Byt. Forever, ma pika.” There it is, beautiful and hidden and perfect. If this isn’t magic, he cannot say what is._

  


A torrent of foreign memories floods her mind, filling every synapse to bursting. Not hers. The creator’s. 

  


_At first light, waking with Kira cocooned against his chest, warm and breathing peacefully, her hair an unruly mess over his pillow. He must rouse her before Master rises. But first... just a little longer._

  


_Blue eyes, overbright and panicked. “Freykaa, I can’t! I’m afraid!” So small. She’s so small. And Skywalker is dead._

_Cradling her face, he speaks with a calmness he doesn’t feel. “Wachamio, my love. I will keep you safe. I swear it.”_

  


_Just once, he knew what it was like to be fed so much love, he couldn’t take it any more. Just once and never again. An oily black takes a stranglehold over his soul, threatening to kill him entirely. His life is empty._

  


_Grief is for the weak, he thinks, the first time he sees red-rimmed golden eyes blazing back with grim determination from the mirror. The past shall be remade._

  


Echoes of yesteryear, deeply ingrained in the kyber crystals. Pieces of their maker’s spirit.

  


Her eyes welling with tears, Rey extinguishes the saberstaff and bolts for the cockpit. In all her haste, she almost tumbles through the pneumatic doors as they slide open. The Twi’lek’s head is bowed, hands folded beneath his chin as if in prayer, his gargantuan frame comically oversized for the pilot’s seat. Gleaming constellations glide across the viewport. Realspace.

  


“Kopecz!” she howls, a little breathlessly.

  


Startled, he lurches upward to look around. His lips curl in a smug sort of satisfaction when he recognises his own lightsaber clenched in her fist. 

  


“Yes, my queen?” 

  


“It’s… it’s okay.” She squeezes her eyes shut for a fraction longer than a blink, tears spilling down her cheeks. They’re not hers. Not _her_ memories. But if she turns her back on another precious opportunity… they could be. “Engage the hyperdrive. Take me to Ben.”

  


Smiling with all his teeth, he gives a deferential nod. “As you wish.”

  


  


~

  


  


The worst part of getting old is watching everything change, knowing all those changes are permanent. Nothing ever changes back.

  


Two parsecs beyond the Griffin, Wedge Antilles turns his X-wing to face the First Order task force that has harried them for so long.

  


It was naive to presume this’d be simple. Everyone wanted this mission to begin with. He wonders if they’re all still as enthusiastic now.

  


Dameron could hardly believe their luck. Eighteen First Order capital ships, clustered together in the Outer Rim like sitting ducks. Convenient. The hundreds of TIEs and support frigates swarming about Wedge’s assigned target, however – not so much. He’ll need to circumvent the lot of them. Thank the stars for Rose’s cloaking device; at least all of the lurid green dots inching across his radar display can’t see _him_.

  


“Our young general’s out of his mind.”

  


Judging by R2-D2’s sulky beeps in the droid socket behind the cockpit, the old rust-bucket shares his sentiment.

  


“Good thing he’s got a couple of wizards like us on side,” he mutters, more to himself than R2.

  


The astromech doesn’t dignify that with a response.

  


He sucks in a breath, grits his teeth. Any lapse in judgement now could result in disaster.

  


“All right. Let’s do this, Artoo. For Leia. Punch it.”

  


With his energy counter hit full, the X-wing accelerates forward, hurtling through outermost layer of the enemy formation. Ahead of him looms the apex of the warship’s giant wedge. Gripping the control yoke, he jukes and weaves masterfully between TIE fighters, careful not to pass close enough for visual recognition. And to think, if not for Teralov – he might’ve been piloting one of them right now.

  


Shuttles by the dozen obstruct his most direct run to the Conqueror. As much as instinct urges him to fire – he could take out fifty in one fell swoop with a couple of well-aimed proton torpedoes, he’s sure – offensive attacks are out this time. More and more specks are winking into existence around the target on his screen, but not one veers off its initial vector as he approaches. According to Poe’s schematics, the laundry chute is easily accessible from Hangar Four.

  


Just got to slip inside.

  


His initial surge of relief quickly turns to alarm as his earpiece crackles to life.

  


“Hey, Cap’n?”

  


Scaling back the thrusters a little, he ignores both the familiar voice and R2’s dubious tootle. Green lights flare across the console as a squadron of interceptors swoops up from below, disturbingly close to visual distance. None open fire. Still cloaked. Excellent. _Stay on target,_ he reminds himself.

  


“Cap? Wedge? You there? Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  


Wedge rolls his eyes. Smart as a whip-snake, savvy as a sail-bird, can’t shut up to save himself. “Radio silence, Black Three,” he chastises tersely.

  


Snap’s reply is immediate. “All due respect, boss, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. What in the blazes was Dameron… there’s fragging thousands of ‘em! It only takes one to spot me and we’re all toast.”

  


“We’re invisible, remember? Radio silence, buddy, or he’ll chew you out later. Just keep your head down and put a sock in it.”

  


“Shoulda brought Mister Bones,” Snap grouses, and he can faintly hear D-0’s disgruntled trill in the background. “’kay, Roger that, Cap’n. Good luck.”

  


Wexley getting all nostalgic now can’t be a good sign, he considers, watching the battlecruiser’s portside flank fill his viewport. Couple of klicks away. Not long now ‘til showtime. Technically, he’s breached Poe’s rules already; a bit of morale-boosting couldn’t hurt. It was his mentorship that inspired Snap to enlist as a fighter pilot to begin with, so from a certain point of view, this is all _his_ fault.

  


“Listen, Snap. The First Order must be destroyed, and if that’s going to happen, some of us gotta stick our necks out. We have to be willing to kill and willing to die. It’s not easy. It never will be, but it’s easier than standing by and doing nothing. I’ll see you in a few, kid. Shout you a cold malt after.” His heartbeat thumps unnaturally loud in his ears as he plucks the flimsiplast note from his flight suit pocket. “And may the Force be with you.”

  


“Sounds good. May the Force be with you, Cap’n.”

  


Static hissing ensues.

  


Angling the ship’s pointed nose toward where he knows the hangar inlet will be, Wedge drifts closer. All ten pilots will be exactly where he is now, each minutes away from infiltrating a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer. Ready to fly into the mouth of the sun-dragon, as Connix so bluntly put it. Back then, it was an irresistible, impossible challenge – the skittermouse versus the rancor. But right now, amidst a sea of enemy spacecraft, it’s all too real.

  


He jumps at R2’s shrill whistle – _incoming transmission_ \- and a line of digital Basic characters blinks onto his display. It’s the Conqueror’s damned bridge monitors, requesting a clearance code for reentry. Chobb’s knob, the cloaking actually worked – they think he’s a TIE fighter. There are ten letters on the screen, ten on the flimsi. Gods bless the Zann Consortium.

  


This is really happening.

  


The Aurebesh passcode spells `LIBERATION’. For some unknown reason, that strikes Wedge as funny as he types back the stolen code.

  


“...isk… osk… mern.”

  


He punches _send_ with a shaking finger.

  


Okay. So far, so good.

  


Through his headset, the static briefly gives way to a hoarse shout - _“It’s dragging me--!… can’t -”_ before swallowing it up again.

  


R2 lets out out a whine. _Do we get another shot, Captain?_

  


“Don’t worry, Artoo. Interference, no doubt...” Wedge’s eyes fall to the display, and his stomach drops in horror.

  


_Nern._

  


Not mern. Idiot.

  


“Son of a bantha. Nern! _Nern!_ Artoo – I’ve farkled the code!” Frantic, his fingers swipe at the display in a flurry of jerky movements – but it’s frozen. Busy sending his stupid rookie error straight to the enemy’s sensors.

  


All at once, the letters flash from red to green, along with another message that makes a knot of potent dread tighten in his gut.

  


  


**CLEARED TO ENTER**

  


  


“Artoo – what the _frack?_ ”

  


The next moment, his X-wing yaws sharply starboard and begins to drift, sucked by an unseen force toward the Star Destroyer. There’s a sensation of suddenly losing altitude, a displacement that makes his body lurch.

  


R2’s shriek drills into his ears. 

  


“About face, NOW!” he screeches at the astromech behind him. “It’s a tractor beam! _It’s pulling us in!_ ”

  


Charging the thrusters to full throttle, he jerks the control yoke in a hard left. The starfighter is unnervingly sluggish to respond, like trying to manoeuvre through Thulian vapour - already sideslipping helplessly to the right – but it gradually rotates through one-eighty. Disregarding a new set of warnings flashing red across the status display suite, he pounds the accelerator and Black Five leaps forward as if kicked.

  


Its cloaking device holds. Small mercies.

  


Adrenaline floods him as the shuttle tears clear of the battlecruiser and weaves seamlessly through one formation of TIEs after another. No response yet from the Conqueror’s perimeter defence. He’ll count his lucky stars back on the Griffin. He’s escaped. He was quick enough.

  


But the others – _karabast,_ they were all synchronised -

  


Forgetting Dameron’s mandate of radio silence, he jabs at the PTT and yells into the headset, panic cresting in his voice. “Black Squadron – Abort! ABORT! It’s a trap! _They knew we were coming!_ ” Screw the general’s crinking orders. That wastoid can castigate him for insubordination later, when they’re all still alive.

  


Buzzing static. No answer.

  


“Black Three?” His voice hitches in alarm. “Snap?!”

  


Nothing.

  


“Chewie? Lando? Come in! Abort! ABORT! _ABORT!_ ”

  


His earpiece remains terrifyingly silent as the tiny craft corkscrews away, unpursued.

  


 

~

  


  


Ben’s direct code is programmed into her comlink.

  


It takes another day before Rey musters the courage to use it.

  


Her mind is a mess. How will she face him in person if she can’t even do _this?_

  


Isolating herself inside Kopecz’s quarters, she falls back heavily into the bedside chair and lets her thumb hover over the PTT. Indecision rocks through her. Every time she and Kylo Ren meet face-to-face, they draw weapons and fight. In the throne room, they’d been powerful together - moving as one unit, each complimenting the other’s strengths, countervailing their weaknesses. But every other time – Kylo was powerful, and she was afraid. 

  


And their last real connection, the one she’s tried so hard to forget. 

  


It left her feverish, craving something she couldn’t name, appalled with herself. He’d shown her acts of savagery and debasement beyond anything she could have imagined a human being was capable of, one horror flowing seamlessly into the next - all the while touching her gently, worshipping her with his clever mouth and clever hands, in stark contrast to the creature in a mask she detests. 

  


He takes everything she has, flips it upside down and leaves her reeling in the aftermath. 

  


Her thoughts are anywhere but on Poe, Chewie and her friends. All she can think about is him, and for that, guilt stings her to the core. 

  


Should she act as if she doesn’t already know him in an intimate capacity? They’ve spoken before. This isn’t the first time. Only… how much of it was real? Through the bond – in dreams – she can escape at will. But the reality of him… it’s almost too much. 

  


In a rush of boldness, she depresses the button, her pulse hammering in anticipation. 

  


There’s a static hum, and then - 

  


No. 

  


No. Bad idea. 

  


This can only end in heated accusations and arguments. Bad. Or pleas and threats against her friends’ lives. Worse. Before she hears anything else, she deactivates the device and hurls it onto the mattress. 

  


Unfastening her belt, she hurries into the ‘fresher cubicle, letting the pneumatic door hiss shut behind her. It feels better, somehow, having a physical barrier between her and responsibility. With trembling hands, she peels away her tunic and capris, kicks off her boots and steps into the shower. 

  


Even the sanitation unit is opulent: immaculately tiled in black, fastidiously clean, and an endless stream of actual hot water – not the icy trickle to which she was accustomed, those few times her assigned shuttle had anything better than a sonic. She scrubs until her skin is raw and her fingertips begin to prune, changes clothes, twists her hair into its customary three buns, reconsiders, leaves it untied. 

  


Then, she collapses belly-first onto the absurdly large sleeper. This mattress could accommodate an army, and still leave room to spare. 

  


It’s all there – it's been piling up in her brain for days. She can’t keep ignoring the sum of all these parts. 

  


Reaching for the comlink, she pushes the PTT again. Waits. 

  


Best not to invest this conversation with significance it likely doesn’t hold. He’s probably busy. 

  


The line clicks, and the silence changes. 

  


“ _We spoke about this, Captain!_ ” Kylo’s voice booms through the receiver. “ _Do as I say. Retrieve the prisoners’ records._ ”

  


She swallows hard, trying to ignore the shaking nerves that riddle through her skin and tighten her stomach. 

  


“ _Do not contact me again._ " 

  


"Kylo." Her resolve is as unsteady as her hands. What should she say? She feels overwhelmed, lost, and more than a little naive. 

  


The silence is long and deeply uncomfortable. 

  


Then, 

  


“...Rey?” 

  


Twisting to sit up, she stares fixedly at the ceiling. Nervousness bubbles beneath her skin. It’s safer this way, she tells herself. She can’t see him, he can’t see her, can’t hurt her. Can’t touch. 

  


“Rey?” he tries again, barely above a whisper, and a tiny thread of hope ripples through the bond. 

  


_Talk, laserbrain._ Like it or not, she’ll be confronting him in a few standard days; a life she has inadvertently entangled herself with. Prince of darkness, oppressor of the galaxy. What was Poe’s derisive title for him? _Supreme Tyrant._

  


“H – hello.” 

  


“Hello.” 

  


She gulps. “Kylo, we need -" 

  


“The terrorists you call friends have been apprehended, if that’s what you want to know,” he interrupts curtly. “Their explosives, contained and deactivated.” 

  


“Apprehended? You haven’t...” 

  


A lengthy pause. “No. They’re unharmed. For now, they are our guests.” 

  


“Your… like _I_ was your guest?” 

  


“If you must know, they have been allocated officers’ cabins. Locked, heavily guarded, but fully equipped. Pending transportation to the Finalizer.” 

  


Her breath catches. “And then?” 

  


“I will decide their punishment.” 

  


“Chewbacca is with them, Kylo. And Lando Calrissian.” Surely, as Han’s son, he’d have known them. Maybe even been close with them. “And -” 

  


“I know,” he says gruffly. “The Wookiee is already aboard. Supposedly he was the most… challenging to subdue.” 

  


In the background, she hears boots thudding, the muffled gabble of a crowd, barked instructions. 

  


“Am – am I on… speaker?” If the entire bridge crew of a Star Destroyer can hear her stammering like this right now, she just might shrivel up with embarrassment. 

  


“No.” 

  


“Good. Please don’t hurt them,” she blurts out. “Whatever you’re doing – just don’t hurt them.” 

  


“I’m not at liberty to divulge the nature of my plans.” Another heavy sigh. “My Knight of Ren informs me that you are also en route. In four standard days, after your arrival and the prisoners’, my fleet will depart this sector. Perhaps we shall dole out justice together.” 

  


He won’t harm them before she embarks the Finalizer. The fact settles comfortably somewhere in her heart. For the time being, it’s enough. 

  


“That’s not all I want to speak with you about.” 

  


He hesitates. “Why aren’t you doing this through the -” 

  


“Your knight,” she cuts him off, her voice tight in her throat. “He could sense when we… and this way, he can’t hear us.” 

  


“Has he hurt you?” 

  


“No.” 

  


“It didn’t look that way.” 

  


Closing her eyes, she tries to shake the paranoia from her mind. “You’ve seen him. Kopecz can be… overbearing… at first.” 

  


“Is he forcing you to come here?” 

  


She sucks her lip between her teeth and bites down, hard. 

  


“Rey, I would never… I won’t have you come before me on some altruistic notion of trading yourself for your friends.” 

  


The words strike her in places that shouldn’t be personal, but are. “I’m not.” 

  


“If you instruct him to take you elsewhere, I will see to it that he obeys.” 

  


“He’s already offered. I refused.” 

  


“Are we going to fight again? A Trial of Skill? To _complete your training_?” 

  


Her skin prickles at the cold sharpness of his tongue. “No.” 

  


“Then does it really matter, if he can hear us?” 

  


“...Maybe.” 

  


A beat of silence. 

  


“Say again?” 

  


Staring at the ceiling, she draws a deep breath to calm the tremor in her voice. “Maybe I don’t want him to be able to hear us right now.” 

  


For a long, drawn-out moment, all she hears is the mechanised lullaby of KDY engines. 

  


“You don’t?” His tone is softer, laced with timid curiosity. 

  


She doesn’t reply. 

  


“All right. Wait.” 

  


With a click, the line goes dead. The change in her skin is instant; it feels fevered, too hot and tight. Falling back onto soft pillows, her body shifts in the mass warmth of the bedclothes. 

  


Whatever she’d anticipated from this conversation, it’s ridiculous. She’s already gleaned what she needs to know. Everything else was… surreal, a vagary in the Force, a collection of debauched, half-remembered dreams and fantasies. There’s no way to untangle these uncertainties. She needs to consider what she has - the potential to sway the Supreme Leader’s conviction against the Resistance - and weigh it against the cost of trying for something more. 

  


She’s thought about Ben more than she cares to admit. Definitely more than she should. 

  


A moment later, the receiver crackles to life again. Quick steps, boots squealing against polished flooring, then nothing. The background flurry from earlier is gone. 

  


“Rey? Are you still there?” 

  


She rolls onto her front, knees bent, feet twisting together in the air. “I’m here. Are you still -” 

  


“I’m in my quarters. Alone.” 

  


_This is real_ , she tells herself. “I… I want to just… talk. Like normal people do. Before I reach your ship.” 

  


No answer. 

  


“Sorry, I… how are you?” she tries. 

  


“I’m well, Rey.” She hears the smile in his voice, imagines those crooked teeth. “Better now. How are you?” 

  


“Okay.” 

  


"Is this all our exchange is going to be, that my knight mustn’t overhear? Pleasantries?” 

  


“I… uh…” 

  


Shifting uncomfortably, she tries not to focus on the steady quiet coming from the receiver. 

  


Then, “Are you afraid?” 

  


The weight of his question hangs between them. She is. Afraid of what, she doesn’t know. Facing her greatest adversary alone. Chasing her destiny. Wanting something unnameable that she can’t bring herself to acknowledge. Not yet. 

  


Thank the stars he can’t hear her thoughts right now. 

  


“ _I_ am,” he volunteers. 

  


“Of what?” 

  


“Of…” - a breath, then he continues in a rush - “you. When we last spoke – and the last time I saw you. That… that I imagine things that aren’t true. When you want something so much for so long – it starts to seem real. We could have created a new Order and you… you wanted no part in it. I’m… as unprepared to meet again as I’d guess you are.” Another awkward pause. She hears the comlink shift, a soft rustle of fabric. “Even for this. Now. This conversation.” 

  


“Oh.” 

  


The silence stretches until she begins to fidget. 

  


“I thought you’d assume I was coming to run rings around you with a lightsaber again,” she quips. 

  


“Ha! That’s not how I remember it." 

  


She laughs, strained and nervous, pressing her feet into the sheets. 

  


“Though you _are_ a formidable adversary, Rey. I would relish the opportunity to clash sabers with you again.” 

  


“I don’t want to fight you,” she murmurs. 

  


The line goes quiet again, and her fingers tease a stray strand from the edge of the pillow while she waits. 

  


“Then… what _do_ you want?” 

  


“I want to know that you’re not… I need to know why. How anyone could… the lightning and killing your knights and… the other things.” Her heart feels too snug in her chest. “I need to know that… it wasn’t you.” 

  


“Must we speak about this?” 

  


She gulps. “If I’m going to face you, then yes.” 

  


He doesn’t say anything, and an irrational part of her suddenly worries that he’ll cut her off. For two solid minutes, she waits, staring at nothing. She shouldn’t have said it. Shouldn’t have vocalized the shapeless truth she’s been trying desperately to avoid, looming large on the horizon now that they’re whizzing toward the Finalizer faster than lightspeed. 

  


“...Kylo?” she prompts. 

  


“It’s Kylo now?” There’s a vulnerable edge to his voice that raises gooseflesh on her arms. “Because of what you… saw? Not what you used to call me.” 

  


“I don’t know. What should I call you? Supreme Leader? Emperor? _Dinek?_ ” 

  


“You shouldn’t listen to him.” 

  


“Why not? He worships you.” 

  


“Because his adulation is misguided.” He coughs, the comlink shifting away. “I had no control over what you saw, as you had no control over what I saw when we first touched.” 

  


“But it was all real.” 

  


“...Yes, Rey. It was all real.” 

  


Another long stretch of silence. For a mind-rending second, she is certain he will disconnect. For sure this time. 

  


“Why didn’t you show me any of the context?” she probes, realising she hasn’t spoken. 

  


“What?” 

  


“The people you freed on Bothawui by killing their slave traders. The knight who lured you to Dinzo, to assassinate you and take up the mantle of Supreme Leader… the woman who killed Leia and would have annihilated the whole galaxy.” 

  


“I told you, I couldn’t restrict what you caught. You’re too powerful. I had never tried it before.” His shaky exhale hisses from the receiver. “...I’m not a good person.” 

  


For a second, she wonders what he’d intended she see during her wanton foray through his mind. Sweat-drenched skin slamming into a pulpit, perhaps. Plush lips, learning and exploring. That greedy, inexperienced tongue. It hadn’t been _her_ on the receiving end of his ministrations, but she’d felt it all ripple through her body nonetheless. And his thick, leather-clad fingers filling her up, that twinge of stretching and pleasure-pain. A cloudy drunkenness of spirit she couldn’t help but crave, after, with the bond clamped securely shut, when the initial mortified shock began to wane. 

  


How many times since has she tried to recapture that crazed sensation of losing control, touching herself alone in the dead of night? She'd wanted other things, things that involved lips and tongues and hands and just the right amount of friction. It’s never quite enough. 

  


Her face flushes. These thoughts aren’t going anywhere. Assembling them in any form of coherent reasoning would be absurd. 

  


“What are you doing right now?” she asks instead. 

  


“Talking to you.” 

  


“No, I mean… where are you?” 

  


“In the outer atmosphere of Kintan. You never ask.” 

  


She hesitates. “Because I always wonder if you’re coming after us.” 

  


“That’s why I so rarely ask where you are, Rey. Because I would. Come after you, I mean.” 

  


“You told me the Resistance wasn’t -” 

  


“I don’t care about the Resistance.” 

  


All at once, the mammoth sleeper is too warm. Her bare legs drum restlessly against soft zeyd cloth sheets. 

  


“...Just you.” 

  


Rolling onto her back, she clutches the comlink to her ear, eyes flitting to the door sealing her quarters from the main hold of the command shuttle. Two barriers between herself and the Twi’lek. His complex, nebulous aura is unmistakeably present, but easily blocked. 

  


“I’ve been thinking about this. About having you here – for real.” The slowness of Ben’s voice makes her head swim. “About… what I would do. What _we_ would do.”

  


“Me, too,” she confesses.

  


No reply. If she strains to listen, his breathing is just barely audible.

  


“How old are you, Kylo?” 

  


“Kylo again?” He chuckles softly, the sound rumbling from the speaker and thrumming through her chest. “Older than you.” 

  


"That’s not an answer.” 

  


Something in his voice catches, like irritation. “Older than you, by ten solar cycles.” 

  


“Is that… too old?” 

  


As soon as she says it, she wishes she hadn’t. 

  


The silence is different this time. Tense, somehow. She listens to the static buzz through the speaker, a churning agitation from the past few days seething to the surface. 

  


“Too old for what, Rey?” 

  


“Nothing,” she mutters, her face and ears burning. 

  


He’s quiet for so long that she waits for that telltale click again. 

  


She wonders what it would be like lying beside Ben right now, alone together on this colossal sleeper, talking quietly about sweet nothings. The thought makes her throat feel tight. Unbearably tight. Never has she belonged anywhere, to anyone, and there’s no home to go back to any more. 

  


“I wish you were here,” she murmurs into the empty chamber. 

  


“I wish you were here, too.” 

  


Perhaps all that’s happened has left her impulsive for some thrill. This isn’t at all what she’d anticipated from this exchange. Hostility, at best. His eager curiosity is throwing her off guard. 

  


“What would we do, Ben? …If I was there, on your ship?” 

  


Another low laugh, that soft swishing of material again. “Talk. Dine together. Read. Maybe spar.” 

  


Yes. She’d like that. Just recalling the Finalizer’s kitchen and its tantalising breakfast aromas makes her mouth water. And – how she would delight in sparring with him again. Watching him duck and parry her blows with effortless grace, training blades clashing harmlessly, their feet dancing together on the same deck, with no concern that one of them might be abruptly whisked away on a whim of the Force. 

  


“Definitely kiss you.” 

  


Her smile fades to the heat escaping her lips. 

  


“Not like… last time.” Ben’s subtle Chandrilan accent drawls a little heavier on each syllable in a way that makes her heart race. “It was different – fighting you on Starkiller and Seregar, to sparring through the bond. A thousand times more exhilarating. More physical. More _real_. I want this, too. I want to feel you.” 

  


Absently, she pinches her lower lip between her fingertips, trying to relive the false sensation of his teeth there, gently nipping. She blinks against the soft glowplate light before shutting her eyes to focus on his voice.

  


“...Am I scaring you away?”

  


His amusement spreads to her own smile. “Not yet.”

  


“Not _yet?_ ”

  


“Where are _you_ right now?”

  


“In my quarters.” Something creaks, like bedsprings straining.

  


“Where, exactly?’

  


“Oh. At my desk. You’ve seen it.”

  


“Are you reading? Studying?”

  


“I will be.” She pictures his goofy grin, eyes the colour of sunlight through whiskey wrinkling at the corners. “Why all the questions?”

  


“I want a mental picture. Since I can’t see you. What are you wearing?”

  


“Uh… training gear. You’ve seen that, too. What -”

  


“Liar.”

  


He laughs again, but it wavers into a weak sound. “Very well. What are _you_ wearing?”

  


“Well… I showered before I radioed you, rinsed my clothes. I know how stupid that sounds – it’s not a holocomm or anything, but -”

  


“Is your hair loose?”

  


“...Yes.”

  


“Good. I like it loose,” he says shyly. “What else would I see? If I was there?”

  


“Um...” Rey glances down at the decidedly _un_ -provocative breastband binding her ribcage, the grey standard-issue briefs below the jut of her hipbones. “A lot of skin and bones, I guess.”

  


“Don’t give me that bantha fodder. You’re breathtaking. If I was with you...” His voice quavers, and when he speaks again, its timbre drops a fraction lower. “Are you… you aren’t naked, are you?”

  


“No.” Biting her lip, she squeezes her eyelids shut, trying to press the nervousness away. “But _you_ are.”

  


“I most certainly am _not._ ”

  


“You _are._ ”

  


He swallows, hard – it’s audible. “How would you know?”

  


“You sound naked.”

  


A snicker. “And what does naked sound like, Rey?”

  


“Like...”

  


Like a brilliant, sharp-witted man, all hard muscle and battle scars, honestly oblivious to how disarmingly alluring he is. Like someone who doesn’t need paranormal powers or the Force to be that way. Like the person buried inside Kylo Ren with whom she could so easily fall in love. _Don’t be afraid. Let me. It’s my turn._

  


This definitely isn’t going the way she’d thought.

  


“I’ll peek,” she threatens.

  


“Go ahead.”

  


She almost snorts. Called her bluff so easily.

  


“You’re in bed?”

  


“…Yes. It’s so enormous, there’s no room left in this chamber for anything else. Bigger than yours.”

  


“Strange, that you might know the dimensions of my sleeper without ever having been here.” He clears his throat. “Perhaps we will have to rectify that. When you arrive.”

  


“So self-assured, Supreme Leader,” she teases, bubbling out a nervous laugh. Where is all this foolish boldness coming from?

  


“Not nearly as cramped as your little berth, I daresay.”

  


And just like that, all playful pretence evaporates.

  


Static.

  


The realisation sends an electric jolt straight through her. She’d slept there once, and only once – while collared. Had half-lucid dreams that she still can’t shake. He couldn’t have opened the bond.

  


It wasn’t real.

  


_Couldn’t_ have been real.

  


After a moment’s stunned silence, he speaks again, sounding flustered.

  


“I… Rey, I’m not making sense. Sometimes for me the lines between dreams and reality start to blur -”

  


“ _Kezz’Sreik’Kuras._ The Predator Beast of the Dusk. The Horns of Waryl,” she interrupts. The words come out in a nervous ramble, like she can’t keep them in. “On your back. Constellations. Freckles.”

  


No answer. 

  


Staring numbly at the comlink, she waits for minutes that seem to stretch into an eternity. 

  


He’ll disconnect now, for certain. It’s too much. 

  


Then, cautiously, “You… you, too?” 

  


Her mind is startled blank. 

  


“...Rey?” 

  


Blinking at the device, her brain scrambles to make sense of it all. 

  


"Rey? Are you still there?” 

  


There’s only his basso voice, flowing like hot water from the showerhead in glorious abundance. 

  


“I don’t know what the Force is doing with us or why, but… I was glad to be with you. Even if it was a hallucination. Yours. Ours. We’re not ourselves in dreams. And if I cannot have you, I will be content to dream of you for as long as I still can.” 

  


Drawing her knees to her chest, she tugs the sheets around herself in a nest of warmth and glowers at the comlink. 

  


She should throw it away. Right now. 

  


Before this conversation keeps going… where it seems to be going. She’s already in way too far over her head. 

  


“Instead of dreaming of you every night and thinking about you from the moment I wake, I would much rather wake beside you,” he murmurs into her ear, the deep rumble making her shiver. Or maybe it’s how painfully intimate he sounds. 

  


His honesty makes her jittery and bold at the same time. It’s soothing - and electrifying.

  


Her thumb hovers over the PTT. 

  


Now. Throw it away. 

  


But the temptation to do otherwise proves entirely too powerful. 

  


“Are you in bed, Ben?” she asks, already knowing the answer. 

  


“Yes." 

  


She rubs her bare legs together on the sheets, imagining something else. Leather breeches or broad thighs shifting between them, the warmth and comforting weight of a much larger figure. Mindlessly pressing one fingertip between her lips, she lets herself pretend it’s the wet pressure of his tongue against the edges of her teeth. 

  


It’s not as though she’s never done this before, and this way… it’s safe. His voice curls around her from millions of light years away. 

  


“Tell me,” he says quietly. “Tell me what you remember. The constellations, and then…?”

  


There it is, that swooping feeling in her stomach like at the apex of a nosedive – before her X-wing goes plummeting planetside. Well past the point of no return.

  


Taking a deep breath, she licks her lips. 

  


"Your palms. Fitting my hands into them. So much bigger.” 

  


Replaying the dream, she imagines those huge hands gripping her waist, sliding against her ribs. His fingernails scraping sensitive skin. With her free hand, she drags her own nails over her stomach, the swell above her breastband, trying to imitate the sensation.

  


“Your muscles. Your chest – how I could barely get my arms around you. How sensitive you were. How responsive. You were ticklish… and the way your whole body tensed up when I started kissing you.”

  


There’s a muffled sound from the other end, but he doesn’t reply.

  


“The noises you made when I used my teeth,” she continues, digging her nails into her thighs and imagining other teeth in their place, grazing her skin. _His_ teeth. “I… I wanted to bite every inch of you. Hard." Embarrassment tints her cheeks. So candid. How much had he actually experienced, and how much was just her lovelorn, overactive imagination running overtime? It’s still there – the giddy thrill of being astride him, doing things to his body that made her feel powerful, and desired, and cherished.

  


The silence seems thicker, somehow.

  


“And when I took you in my mouth -”

  


Another thump from Kylo’s end. His breathing sounds harsher, hurried. The bond hums and vibrates with pleasure, warmth purling through her as she speaks.

  


“Watching you tense everywhere, and shudder and throw your head back. Knowing I could do that to you. The little gasps you make when I -”

  


He’s panting now, unseen things crashing and thudding about his quarters.

  


“...Ben?”

  


Hot, frantic breaths, pausing before they quicken once more.

  


“Ben?” she tries again, half-wondering if he’s demolishing the room.

  


A strangled grunt crackles from the receiver.

  


“Rey… R- Rey… p-please don’t stop...”

 

Oh.

  


_Oh._

  


She goes still.

  


Not razing his chamber, then.

  


Now that she's quiet, she can hear the primal slap-slap of skin on skin in a frantic rhythm, shimmersilk sheets sliding together beneath his monolithic frame as he shifts.

  


He can’t see her. Can’t touch, as long as she keeps her thoughts firmly grounded in the present. Her free hand steals beneath the waistband of her briefs.

  


Slowly, she traces the divot of her hip to the cleft between her thighs, fingertips swirling lightly against her skin.

  


“I wanted _my_ turn, Ben.”

  


“Y- you… will… h-have it,” he stutters out weakly between gasping breaths.

  


Her fingers delve lower, finding herself already wet and slick. Something she’s probably done a hundred times before, desperate for a dull orgasm or two to lull her to sleep in long, lonely nights inside an AT-AT carcass. But hearing Ben struggle for control like this, the guttural sounds he’s making, somehow heightens the sensation. Every nerve in her body feels tightly wound, vibrating just under the surface of her skin.

  


“Tell me what you would do.”

  


“ _Unnh..._ ” - he exhales in a rush - “ _tell-me-what-you-want._ ”

  


That hot-water voice, so strained and eager.

  


Stroking steadily, Rey imagines _his_ fingers, long and thick, reaching out to hers across the fireplace in a tiny stone hut, across oceans of stars. Teasing, parting her with his thumb and exploring… or his tongue flicking against her, thrilling and new and obscene.

  


“I want...”

  


She trembles at the thought.

  


“I want to feel what it was like. I want you to do… all those things… to me.”

  


“ _Nnngh -_ ”

  


“I want all of that… and more.”

  


“L- let me -” His breathing is ragged, shaky as he struggles to get the words out. “ _Let me_ … t-t...”

  


“Touch me, Ben,” she murmurs for him, trying to emulate the way he’d caressed her, only… _there_. So confident and controlled, so sure and firm. Things are getting blurry around the edges. There’s a vague feeling of weightlessness, of fierce sensations coiling below her gut. “I want to see you like this, like you are now. Touch me like I'm t... touching myself. I want... all of you.”

  


“Ah – _ahhhhh!_ ”

  


A loud _crunch_ erupts from the comlink and she snaps upright, dropping it in the process and tearing her other hand away.

  


The line goes dead.

  


Startled, she snatches it up again, pounding the PTT over and over. “Ben?”

  


Nothing.

  


“ _Ben?_ ”

  


For a handful of heart-stopping seconds, the silence is disorienting. She’s alone once more, sitting on a ludicrously oversized sleeper in her underwear like a moof-milker, the bedside glowplate casting hazy shadows across the walls.

  


What has she done? Glancing at the pneumatic door sealing her chamber away from glowing eyes and intrusive minds, her skin prickles with guilt.

  


Interference suddenly burbles from the speaker.

  


Still fixated on the hatch, she lifts it to her ear. “Hello?”

  


No response, other than distant clatter and a voice muttering shaky expletives, all but drowned out by static.

  


“Uh… Ben?”

  


“...karking _fracking_ minions of Xendor...”

  


Rey bites her lip, pointedly trying not to think about what they’ve just been doing.

  


“I’m here, Rey.”

  


“Did… um, did you...”

  


“I… I did. Yeah. Yes.”

  


“What happened? I mean… I _know_ what happened, but -”

  


“I… I broke the comlink,” he stammers, and she can almost hear the sheepish grin in his voice. “And some other things.” 

  


"Mmm, so I heard.” 

  


Ben doesn’t reply, leaving her to processes the absurdity of it all. 

  


Never has she actually faced him except in confrontation or combat, yet here she is, being hauled before him like some prized turkey by an eccentric, woebegone underling. And he’s scarcely touched her – not in the physical realm, anyway – outside of abducting her in the Takodana woods and later escorting her to Snoke, to be interrogated and tortured. 

  


And now... _this._

  


It’s utter madness. 

  


She visualises the absolute wreckage he’s likely made of his quarters, and in the middle of it all, Ben – Supreme Leader of the First Order – smiling that rueful, lopsided smile of his, like a naughty child caught with his hand in the sweet-sand cookie jar. 

  


A giggle escapes her throat at the thought, unbidden – and before she can stop herself, she hears him chuckling from the other end along with her. 

  


Separated by an infinite expanse of space, they laugh together. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Twi'leki/Ryl Translations:**  
>  _Afa eskaa’lia tun_ = I love you  
>  _pika_ = someone held close to the heart  
>  _dinek_ = king  
>  _Wachamio_ = Let's go  
>  _freykaa_ = beloved
> 
>  **Quotes:**  
>  Haruki Murakami, _Norwegian Wood_ (1987): "Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once."  
>  Joss Whedon (1964-): “Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.”
> 
> Chapter 28: Slow burn no longer! Apologies for the delay - real life is kicking my butt.


	28. Kd1 Bb3+

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren doesn’t deserve this. A gentleman would have kissed her goodnight, especially their first night together. Instead of doing things to her that would make Skywalker turn in his grave. 
> 
> It was selfish. Inexcusable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical inspiration for this chapter: [Meg Myers - Desire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR5u9jb0PJE)
> 
> Credit to @o0-snowdrop-0o for central image.

 

 

 

Kylo blinks awake and stirs under the sheets.

 

More than likely another dream, he considers muzzily. He’s dimly aware of a much smaller figure curled against him, chuffs of warm breath caressing his neck on each exhale. Sliding a hand up her bare arm, he pinches her shoulder roughly between his fingertips.

 

“Ow.”

 

Impossible. He sucks in a sharp breath and pinches her again.

 

“Mmph, _Ben._ ” It’s that muffled tone that means she’s half-asleep. Like when she opened her eyes during those clandestine nocturnal visits months ago and thought him a dream.

 

Then a small hand bats blindly at his face as if to check he’s still there, and his heart soars.

 

She’s real.

 

This is no cruel hallucination underlining the gap between desire and reality. She’s genuinely _here,_ the only adversary to ever truly frighten him, this sharp-toothed nexu of a girl who is somehow wonderfully soft beneath all her sharp edges. On his ship. In his sleeper. In his _arms._ Tendrils of sleep-mussed hair tickle his jawline where her head is tucked.

 

Yawning, Rey mumbles into the curve of his throat. “Stay.”

 

“I can’t, -” _my love._ The words were almost out of his mouth before they formed in his brain. “I need to get up.”

 

There will be conferences with the former Royal Court of Onderon and the Malastarian council to negotiate their terms of allegiance. Dragging meetings, endless politics. Ten more `guests’ due to arrive - any of whom would have killed fifty-five thousand First Order servicemen without compunction. And Kluub Ren, demanding that he transpose his entire battlefleet to the Abrion Sector immediately. Victory in one war inevitably instigates another.

 

He wants to groan at the thought of it all.

 

Only maybe – _maybe_ if, by some miracle, she doesn’t leave – he won’t have to face it alone.

 

Just holding her feels like he's recharging something essential. Her scent is euphoric; sunshine and innocence and _Rey._ He could drown in it.

 

Kylo Ren doesn’t deserve this. A gentleman would have kissed her goodnight, especially their first night together. Instead of doing things to her that would make Skywalker turn in his grave.

 

It was selfish. Inexcusable.

 

“ _Stay.”_ The arm she draped over his waist sometime during the night tightens a little. “It’s too early.”

 

Judging by the artificial light filtering in from outside, the clangour of loudspeakers and ‘troopers stomping about the craft – he’s overslept. And to call his chamber untidy would be a gross understatement. It’s in shambles. His eyes move over a holopad communicator strewn across the deck in a million pieces, the remnants of a comlink looking like it’s fallen victim to a denton explosive. He’d heard it shatter somewhere through the mental fog, at that white-out moment when his cock struck the back of her throat. An ivory tunic rended right down the middle, a Govath-wool boot on his writing desk (now splintered beyond recognition), adesote sleeping pants slung into a corner.

 

It’s a miracle they hadn’t demolished the entire battlecruiser. The first time he made her come, he could have sworn he felt the deck tilt.

 

No wonder his subordinates left them alone.

 

Just the memory of last night makes his pulse speed and his dick stiffen. Soft-edged recollections of her moaning in the dark. It’s as if her body was made especially for him, every part perfectly moulded – her lips, her thighs clenched around his waist, teardrop-shaped breasts that fit whole in his mouth.Tamping himself down had been agony. If only she knew the things she makes him want to do to her, she’d probably break for the nearest escape pod right now, nude or not.

 

Pushing up to perch at the edge of the sleeper, he lingers for a moment, mapping her out and storing her away across all senses. _His_ Rey, sprawled bonelessly on her stomach in a sea of black shimmersilk, her breath swelling and falling like the ocean tides. Her long, lean figure is exquisite, all soft freckles and planes of golden skin. With one knee flexed up to her hip, Kylo can see… _everything_. Something inside him comes loose at the sight. There’s still a soft wetness between her thighs where he’d licked her raw and pink, until his pulse beat red and the bond showered sparks like a livewire.

 

 _It has always been you,_ he thinks into the void.

 

Once will never be enough. Not even close. He’ll have her over and over, and never tire of it.

 

 

~

 

 

_Without breaking eye contact, Ben holds the sacred parchment out to Master Skywalker. An offering. A plea. He knew he was ready for the Trials of Knighthood, regardless of the Master’s condescension. Too immature...too young._

 

He’ll _show him immature._

 

“ _Speak, Ben,” Luke says, as if inviting a feathered dog to do a trick._

 

“ _I solved your riddle. It’s penitence.”_

 

_Luke casts a suspicious eye his way. After several moments he takes a tentative step forward, reaches up and takes the scroll from his hand._

 

“ _Penitence,” Ben repeats sharply._

 

“ _You had help.”_

 

_A tiny frisson of pride blooms in his chest; he’s guessed correctly. It’d been easier than taking clams from a Gungan. One of the benefits of having an eidetic memory. If the almighty Luke Skywalker insists on enforcing the rites of the old Order on his inaugural class - challenges he himself never had to accomplish to earn the rank of master - then Ben Solo will breeze through every last one._

 

“ _I didn’t! Search your feelings,_ Uncle. _Ask the others. You’ve had my datapad for a week - I couldn’t check the Archives.” There’s nowhere to hide from Skywalker’s gaze, cold and flinty. “Besides, who else among us has solved the High Riddles of Dwartii? Who else has even tried?”_

 

_Before Ben protested in front of the entire class – one furious, cogent argument after another - only Tchock and Byt were granted the opportunity to undertake the ancient trials. Both failed miserably._

 

“ _Pride is the mask of one’s own faults, Ben. But you_ have _passed the Trial of Insight,” Luke concedes with a sigh. “The rest will not be so easy.”_

 

“ _I shall rise to the challenge, Master.”_

 

_Something uncertain roils in Luke’s eyes, knotting his brow. “Your hubris will be your downfall.”_

 

 _Ben’s smirk falters. That whisper inside, the one Skywalker never hears, oozes wicked satisfaction. He will_ never _be knighted. Bestowing such an honour from uncle to nephew would be perceived as an act of favouritism. Ben Solo could outshine the others by a billionfold, and still be wearing his padawan’s braid until the day he dies._

 

_After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world._

 

 

~

 

 

**Two standard days earlier**

 

Riddles have no place here. The bleeding, gaping maw that is the First Order consumes everything in its path. Which, today, is the last vestige of Crimson Dawn.

 

Slumped on a hideous reproduction of Snoke’s cathedra, Kylo swipes at a datapad. Every bit of his hunched posture wordlessly screams frustration.

 

The procession of dignitaries from the Outer Rim and Western Reaches has been endless, fawning and mincing words to pledge allegiance to the First Order now that the Hutts have lost their dominion. Whether in person or by holoprojection, the sight is profoundly unsettling… and after the first few, mind-numbingly boring. Every time, he struggles to maintain a professional demeanour and espouses the same meaningless platitudes. As Supreme Leader, he’d have supplied and defended them regardless.

 

In time, no one under his jurisdiction shall starve, or toil as slaves, or be conscripted into servitude. Not under the First Order, nor anyone else.

 

The galaxy shall be created anew.

 

 _If_ Kylo can just… keep it together.

 

 

**_< Dryden Vos>:_ **

_Salutations, Supreme Leader Ren._

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_Dryden Vos’s lieutenant betrayed and murdered him in 10BBY._

_I presume you wish to discuss payment._

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_Margo._

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Shall we forgo our niceties, then?_

_Know thine enemy._

 

 

The wireshark running on the footer displays lists of constantly-changing coordinates. Crimson Dawn’s leader has taken pains to remain hidden. She will be no easy target.

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_The enemy of my enemy is my ally, is he not?_

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_I am not._

_You have provided something of value, however._

_The greatest victory is that which requires no battle._

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Clearly our sovereign ruler does not practice what he preaches._

_But in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity._

_A fellow Qwi Xux enthusiast, I see._

 

 

Kylo bristles. Had Stynnix captured anyone other than two rustbuckets and his mother’s killer, he could be tearing Crimson Dawn’s location from their fickle brains right this instant. The images of sickly, emaciated slaves on Bothawui are forever burned into his mind.

 

He takes his time to respond, dragging out the conversation for as long as possible.

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Your traceroute is pointless, Ren. I am everywhere and nowhere._

_Are you enjoying my gift?_

_Shall we continue to speak in riddles? Or shall we negotiate?_

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_Two hundred thousand credits to an account of your choosing._

_Gifts are never given without an expectation of something in return._

 

 

Her point of origin transmitter ought to have been pinpointed by now. Phelleem Sector. Maw Cluster. Jontan Asteroid Belt. Whatever onion router Crimson Dawn has programmed, it is outplaying the First Order’s state-of-the-art tech with ease.

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Ten minutes. Your primitive trace is worth skug. Have your scuttles stand down._

_I care not for the snivelling Sithspit you called General._

_Nor do I care for your money._

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_What do you want, Margo?_

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_A gesture of good faith, shall we say?_

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_There will be no new treaty._

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_You assume too much._

_Since you are so generous with your offerings, Supreme Leader, after a lifetime as a successful entrepreneur, one becomes accustomed to the accoutrements of wealth. Luxuries so rarely afforded to one in hiding. As I’m certain a scion of royalty such as yourself would appreciate._

 

 

Incensed, he resists the urge to snap the datapad over one knee. Never in his life has he sought the trappings of luxury. The transition from Jedi padawan to Snoke’s apprentice led him from one frugal, ascetic lifestyle to another. He would gladly sacrifice a million dreadnoughts, ball droids and Chandrilian tendermeats to watch a single sunrise as a man free of responsibility.

 

But if he doesn’t engage, he will forfeit any chance of a capture.

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_You have my attention._

_What of your subordinates?_

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>: ** _

_The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies._

_Most dead by your hand. Some, by mine._

_I desire some measure of comfort in my twilight years. Immunity from persecution and a position of rank._

_Perchance the General’s post aboard your flagship is currently vacant?_

 

 

Aghast, he almost drops the device. She can’t be serious.

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Is it so strange, aspiring to join the First Order?_

_Now that you are advocates of the downtrodden, torchbearers of light and goodness?_

 

 

 _Karking Sithspawn_ , he types, but backspaces before he can send it.

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Answer me, Ren._

_I am not a patient woman._

 

 

_**< Unknown User>: ** _

_You will surrender yourself?_

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Surrender? No. An entrepreneur with my expertise could be a valuable asset._

_Crimson Dawn outlasted the New Republic, the Trade Federation and the Galactic Empire_

_And will outlast the First Order, should an agreement be unnegotiable._

 

 

The tracer report continues to spill out coordinates, reams upon reams of hyperwave transceivers. No end in sight.

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_General, Margo?_

_Does this conversation have a purpose other than being frustratingly time-wasting?_

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Still can’t locate me, can you? It is you who is wasting time._

_An opposing faction will suffice, if you are not in agreement._

_I have ties with every one of your enemies, including those you have yet to identify._

_I could be useful._

 

 

_**< Unknown User>:** _

_The Order’s officer training program is second to none._

_With your experience, that tenure could be greatly expedited._

_A supervised role to begin with._

_Trust is to be earned, not expected._

 

 

 _System error,_ the warning flashes onscreen, not that it matters any longer. Margo’s response is immediate.

 

 

_**< Dryden Vos>:** _

_Agreed._

 

 

At the sound of footsteps, he sets aside the datapad.

 

Unannounced, Captain Stynnix strides confidently past the guards and sinks to one knee before the throne. In her wake, a cadre of Stormtroopers surround a burgundy-clad figure; a rabid cur, hemmed in on all sides with six blaster barrels funnelled directly at him. As much as Kylo avoids the prisoner’s gaze, he can feel it, cold and calculating.

 

“Supreme Leader: the defector from the Bilbringi Shipyard, as requested.”

 

The man Kylo had allowed to rule the galaxy for a full solar cycle stands comfortably at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. Hux’s auburn hair is dishevelled, long and sticking out in a sweaty cowlick. A suit of armour clings to his weedy physique, his pallid face streaked with dirt. In this moment, he looks guilty as hell. Except, maybe, for his eyes, which meet Kylo’s dead-on. They are narrowed, silently accusing.

 

Before the prisoner can speak, an unseen force slams him into the polished black floor.

 

“My disappointment over your performance cannot be overstated, Captain,” Kylo bites out stiffly. “Had you exercised patience, you might have ambushed Crimson Dawn’s flagship as well.”

 

Behind her, wheezing and groaning, Hux fights to rise and reclaim his dignity. His livery resembles a Guavian soldier’s, but reeks of stale ammonia. Blood dribbles from a freshly split lower lip into his bristly beard as he growls something incoherent. No sooner has he scrabbled to his elbows than his forehead smashes into the deck once again, as if punched from above.

 

Stynnix winces, deepening her bow. One hand unconsciously flits to her neck. She’s expecting to be throttled, Kylo realises absently. “My lord, with such short notice… we were scarcely able to reach the sector in time.”

 

“Careful, Ren,” Hux bleats, rising to stare into Kylo’s eyes with a species of stormy contempt. “My methods are incontestable. Wizardry is for children and lunatics. I shepherded the First Order into a new era, and without my expertise -” His tirade breaks off in a wet gurgle as the Force coils around his windpipe, and his eyes go wide with fear.

 

Prosaic speeches and superheated rhetoric are Hux’s specialities. Not today.

 

“Do you have something to say?” Kylo asks blandly.

 

Cupping one gloved hand, he strangles Hux until his eyes bulge and his feet leave the floor. Until the ashen-faced, bleeding traitor is maintaining consciousness only through sheer force of will.

 

“It… isn’t… high… treason… to… torture… POWs,” he chokes out.

 

Kylo releases him, the gesture offhand. “That is correct.”

 

Hux’s breathing is horribly ragged. Each inhale sounds like it’s shredding something inside. But he smiles then, and in that smile, Kylo sees the megalomanic dictator who would’ve had him murdered in his sleep and claimed the throne for himself. And who will in time, Kylo has little doubt, wheedle his way back up the hierarchy or rally an opposing army, if he’s afforded any latitude.

 

Armitage Hux plays the long game. Just one of many reasons he needs to die.

 

“Don’t be foolish, you crazy fuck,” he spits through breathless gulps of air. “Our first and foremost task is annihilation of the Resistance vermin. We tolerate no opposition – only subordination.”

 

A blaster bolt would be too good for this whoreson. He deserves to be hanged with a slow rope.

 

Hux will never have the sick gratification of knowing just how much his final target hurt. Let him assume it was the Rakata Prime trio - whose maltreatment he will suffer himself soon enough, centimetre by excruciating centimetre. Provided Kylo can refrain from splintering his cranium right here and now. _Finish him, my good and faithful apprentice._

 

Instead, he addresses Stynnix. “Arise, Captain. You heard him: it is not high treason to torture prisoners of war. Take him away.”

 

It’s faint, but Kylo catches it: a flicker of confusion in Hux’s eyes.

 

“Yes, my lord.” Climbing to her feet, the captain seizes her former superior by the scruff of his collar.

 

Hux looks up again, features settled. He looks determined. Self-assured. Fierce. “Unhand me, woman.”

 

Stynnix takes a moment to tap the blaster pistol holstered at her hip with her free hand - a reminder of his place - before she shoves him forward. The prisoner wastes no time trying to bargain with his captors, making promises in a faux-confidential tone, even before he has left the court.

 

His forehead thumps the bulkhead doorframe as they escort him through. Even from across the cavernous chamber, Kylo can hear Stynnix utter a casual _whoops!_ then her entourage, chortling quietly.

 

Now that the capture has been made and his blood has cooled a little, Kylo reaches for the datapad – and rips his hand back at the sight of purple sparks arcing between his fingertips. He wills it to stop.

 

A brittle silence descends upon the throne room.

 

It doesn’t stop.

 

Leia’s death left behind a piercing emptiness that time doesn’t seem to be able to dull. Slowly but surely, the dark side is stealing his mind like a deranged thief, taking what it pleases, injecting unholy ideas, seeding a new personality and muddling up the rest. His reality is distorted. Like being dragged out to sea by an undertow he's powerless to swim against. Ben Solo is not just a distant memory; it’s as though he ever existed. With every passing day, the nightmarish drone in his ears sounds less like Snoke’s and more like his own.

 

It’s done. Official action to mitigate the threat: the only remaining kingpins of any importance, reeled in like razorback whales. So why does he still feel like the ghost in his own machine? A prisoner slung cheap insults that should have bounced right off and somehow didn’t. Images dance before his eyes: piled-up corpses engulfed in sand, entire planetary systems exploding and bloodsoaked breeches and the Keshiri bitch, grinding him into the dirt.

 

Insanity is Kylo’s curse. What he fears above all else.

 

His gaze comes to rest on the viewport, and the aching thing inside him suddenly aches a lot more.

 

Two days.

 

 

~

 

 

_The Trial of Skill that Skywalker selects for his nephew is as hard-hearted and sadistic as those enforced in the days of the old Order. Padawans’ shells harden or they fracture, he decrees._

 

_For two nights and one day, Ben must handbalance one-armed while suspending a single stone at eye level. Not physically taxing, provided he opens himself completely to the Force. His eyes flick skyward while he narrates Ben’s challenge, toward the grey clouds billowing in from the west._

 

_No sooner has Skywalker left him halfway up the hillside than a streak of silver splits the heavens and the downpour begins._

 

_On the first night, their settlement is whipped by an electrical storm. Thunder rolls out from the blackened sky, permeating the air every bit as much as the rain and intermittent spates of hail. Biting winds howl through the commune with brutal force, scattering dried leaves and banging doors in a chaotic drumbeat. They batter his inverted figure and tear at his already-saturated clothes._

 

_Ben shivers in the darkness, teeth chattering while freezing rain and perspiration trickle into his eyes. His sodden tunic creeps up his chest, exposing bare skin to the pelleting hailstones. Focus, sleemo! Focus! In the distance, the huts creak and groan as if some tempestuous night spirit sought to destroy them completely._

 

_But the rock holds steady._

 

 _If it falls – or if_ he _falls - Skywalker will know. He won’t give him that satisfaction._

 

_At sunrise, the deluge finally abates. By then his muscles are screaming, anguish twisting his stomach, skin numbed to the cold. Through near-exhaustion and scrambled logic, some vestigial part of his brain reminds him: twenty-four standard hours remain. It’s beyond endurance. This is the old man’s special kind of torture._

 

_Trembling, he glowers at the pebble and gathers whatever scraps of courage he can muster for the impossible stretch ahead. He doesn’t see the first rays of sunlight spill over the horizon, bringing much-needed heat. Not the myriad colours that streak the sky, nor the birds emerging from their roosts to warble a morning melody, nor the viscous clay squelching beneath approaching boots._

 

_Just the rock._

 

 _He_ won’t _let this defeat him._

 

“Chuba, nerra!” _Muddy footfalls come nearer, then stop._

 

_Gritting his teeth, he grapples to feel the Force flow through him and not the lactic acid broiling his forearm._

 

“ _Oh Mother of Melan, Ben, you look godawful,” she chirps._

 

_Of course it’s Kira, as obnoxiously chipper as always. Her earth-toned robes and nest of frizzy black hair are out of focus behind the stone._

 

Leave me alone, _he shoots back - but if she registers anything, she chooses to ignore it._

 

_Squatting before his point of focus, she cocks her head and lifts a finger to poke at it. “I snuck out,” she confesses._

 

“ _Touch that and I’ll end you.”_

 

“ _Seriously, is this it? I was sure he’d give you something heavier. A starfighter, at least.”_

 

_Ben throws her an incredulous glance and she sniggers._

 

“ _Yeah, ‘cause this is so kriffing easy,” he snarks. “I’ll be sure to raise that point with the master when it’s your turn. What are you doing here?”_

 

“ _I brought chicken soup. Homemade. Thought it might warm you up.”_

 

_His already-tenuous balance sways from the vertical. “Go away.”_

 

“ _You’ve gotta be hungry after doing this ridiculous -” she flaps a hand vaguely in his direction - “acrobatic thingy all night. And you’re damn well gonna return the favour when it’s my turn, I’ll have you know. There’s nothing in the Trials about fasting.”_

 

“ _Skywalker sent you,” he grumbles._

 

“ _Did not.”_

 

“ _He sent you to distract me. So I’ll fail.”_

 

“ _Bantha crap.” Kira gives a dramatic eyeroll. “We’re under strict instruction to keep away. But… well, the Trials don’t say anything about isolation either.” Reaching into her satchel, she produces a large thermajug and a spoon. “Daresay a little moral support wouldn’t go astray. Besides, I made wayyy too much of this stuff and ol’ garbage-guts hates chicken.”_

 

“ _Did Byt ask you to come?”_

 

“ _Nope. He’s out like a light. None of us slept much, what with the hailstorm and all. We were worried about you. ‘cept for that self-obsessed harpy, whining nonstop about her shiner.”_

 

“ _I take it the Rammahgon translation is going well, then.”_

 

_She pooches a lip in indignation. “It was totally worth it.”_

 

“Kira.”

 

“ _Shut up and eat your soup.”_

 

“ _Thank you, but how am I supposed to do that?” Pointedly, he wiggles the fingers on his free arm, outstretched from the shoulder._

 

“ _Use the Force, Boy Wonder.”_

 

“ _That’s not how the Force works!”_

 

_Her sunny giggle is so contagious, Ben struggles again not to topple over. “Kidding! Just kidding. I’ll feed you, ‘kay? You just, uh… stay put.”_

 

“ _But – the stupid pebble -”_

 

“ _The Force isn’t about lifting rocks.”_

 

 _He barks out a laugh. Of all people, she_ would _mock-quote Skywalker to his disfavoured nephew. But it’s a moot point, because she’s already assembling a cairn underneath Ben’s charge; when her rockpile is finished, she beams down triumphantly._

 

“ _Happy now? Master needn’t know, and technically you haven’t cheated. You’re still all upside-down-like and the stupid pebble is still up.” Arranging herself cross-legged in front of him, she unscrews the thermajug lid. “Now, eat your skrogging soup.”_

 

_Kira is so ferociously proud of her cooking, he doesn’t have the heart to refuse. Its rich aroma makes him salivate._

 

“Arni’soyacho, numa.”

 

_“Don’t mention it, big brother.” She dunks the spoon and grins archly. “I’m always right here.”_

 

_Swallowing while inverted is difficult. Trying not to choke, or shoot soup out of his nostrils each time she makes him laugh, is even harder. As slow and messy a process as it proves, he slurps ravenously from the spoon as best he can. Her unctuous broth is succulent and warms every part of him, from the inside out._

 

_Even though they see each other day-in, day-out, when the thermajug is empty and his stomach is full, Kira lags behind to meditate. He doesn’t know for how long, but when he finally opens his eyes the cairn has been disassembled, she is nowhere to be seen, and the pebble remains, suspended mid-air._

 

_There is no fine whiskey or triumph in battle, none among the Grand Masters celebrated on pedestals, that can match the smallest speck of joy that is a friend._

 

_Time passes in absolute stillness. Ben watches the land spread out in a blaze of sunlit glory and feels midi-chlorians rambling through the soil beneath his splayed fingers, tranquil and content. After the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, shadows slowly stretch across the landscape. At twilight, there’s only the ebb and flow of power from the forest, newly rejuvenated by the rain, and when Skywalker finally trudges up the hill to rouse him, it feels like no time has elapsed at all._

 

_He passes the second Trial._

 

 

~

 

 

They speak every day.

 

Never as heated as the first night – and never breaching the bond - yet every time the mangled comlink buzzes at his belt, his chest swells with hope. Mostly, Kylo answers her questions about his years on Tython or listens to her spin tales of near-misses in a starship graveyard, content just to bask in the sound of her voice. The Sacred Texts are no longer in her possession, though she refuses to elaborate why.

 

On the one occasion he broaches the topic of the Resistance, Rey disconnects instantly. It makes his throat seize up; she could so easily change course and disappear, leaving him alone in the dark.

 

The next time, he chooses his words carefully, awash with relief that there _is_ a _next time._

 

She’s been training. She’d bisected the lightsaber-resistant phrikite dummy with a lightsaber, then somehow goaded his reticent knight into taking up a weapon again and sparring with her. Both equally incredible feats.

 

Training with her will be exhilarating. As will… everything else.

 

Four standard days of stilted conversation left him half-wondering if Kopecz Ren was eavesdropping. Then last night she’d said it, her voice hushed with affection: _I want to_ _be with_ _you._

 

From the moment Kopecz’s command shuttle heaved itself out of hyperspace, he has sensed her presence, a blazing sun descending upon his warship. She’s close. One standard day, maybe less. The air prickles with her approach.

 

Rey could find him anywhere, across millennia. Their crimson thread is a clear beacon for her to follow.

 

 

~

 

 

Twenty ‘troopers move into place with uniform precision. This captive is a ticking time bomb. Always. Any provocation, no matter how small or insignificant, and his temper will blow.

 

It’s not wise to upset a Wookiee.

 

Within seconds of the cabin door hissing open, Chewbacca launches. Paying no heed to their blasters, he seizes the nearest two Stormtroopers by the ridge of their helmets, hoists them high and smashes their heads together. Both crumple to the deck like rag dolls.

 

He floors the next pair in line before they even begin to advance.

 

In the blink of an eye, he springs – roaring, hurling his bulk around, kicking and throwing punches at the guards. The onslaught drives them back momentarily, just enough for him to snatch up two E-11s from the fallen ‘troopers and take aim.

 

A liability Kylo should have anticipated before their confrontation. Chewbacca lashes out first and thinks later. There’s a full platoon between himself and the Wookiee, but Chewbacca does not tolerate anything that comes between what he wants and his ability to obtain it.

 

Which, right now – is revenge. Primitive, bestial fury flares in the Force.

 

Before Kylo can speak, Chewbacca pitches another ‘trooper into the fray as easily as tossing a dodgeball, with enough force to send another four crashing to the deck in a pile of errant limbs and white plastoid. Having disabled nearly one-half of Kylo’s retinue in a matter of seconds, the Wookiee raises his blasters and takes aim.

 

A dozen ‘troopers do the same.

 

“ _HOLD YOUR FIRE!”_ Kylo booms.

 

The Stormtroopers obey, frozen to the spot. Chewbacca does not. With a flick of his thumbs, he primes both weapons to shoot.

 

In a fraction of a second, a blitz of blasterfire clears a direct path between the seven-foot mammoth and his captor, flashes and sound ricocheting in the narrow hallway. The Wookiee cares nothing for Kylo’s henchmen; he only wants one thing. For an instant, their eyes meet. His face is contorted into a version of himself that Kylo knows he’ll never forget – that same unbridled hatred from Starkiller Base. There’s a cold burning to his rage; an ice that makes Kylo’s stomach clench. He’s seen that ire in Chewbacca’s

_Uncle Chewie’s_

eyes before, but never toward _him._ In one stride, the Wookiee kicks aside a handful of white carapaces like garbage and is in Kylo’s space. In a cantina he’d have both fists balled already, ready and willing to wreak havoc; for his best friend’s murderer, it’s two blaster barrels pointed directly at Kylo’s chest.

 

Twelve helmeted heads twist toward their leader, anticipating orders to open fire. None come.

 

With a nascent roar that shakes the walls, Chewbacca squeezes both triggers.

 

Kylo supposes his fate was sealed from the moment he killed Han, locking him into an inevitable series of events that would culminate in this. The Wookie doesn’t just want his erstwhile nephew dead; he wants him smashed, obliterated, nothing left to bury. To mete out retribution of the cruellest sort.

 

Faster than the human eye can register – faster than blasterfire – Kylo raises a gloved hand and absorbs every bolt.

 

He won’t draw his saber. Won’t disable him with tricks of the Force or crush his skull with a wave of his fingers. This isn’t why he’s come. But with the Wookiee like this, anything he could possibly say will ring hollow.

 

Confused, Chewbacca utters a garbled yowl. There is stillness on both sides. If hatred was visible, the air between them would be scarlet.

 

“I mean you no harm,” Kylo says quietly.

 

His answer is a second fusillade of laserfire, each bolt careening into his leather-clad fingertips as if magnetised. Unflinching, he assimilates the shower of energy. The ‘troopers observe in stunned silence, torn between defending their leader and turning tail to flee. It’s as if the temperature has dropped. All of the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

 

The Wookiee will never listen. Not to him. Why should he? He’d witnessed Kylo Ren slaughter his lifelong companion. Carved out a harrowing existence as a fugitive in a galaxy under the clutches of the First Order. Watched helplessly as his race was forced into slavery. Lost his princess, his spacecraft, every remaining tie he had to the Rebellion. His eyes flash sharp and hard as he barks out another accusation, voice strangled in its intensity, and Kylo understands every word.

 

_Patricidal maniac._

 

How close he sounds to Armitage Hux. Kylo deserves it all. He deserves worse.

 

_I got you once, kid. I’ll do it again._

 

Kill or be killed; there’s no middle ground. And then Kylo does something new; a preemptive defence. Instead of waiting for another cannonade, he rocks on his heels and dredges up a technique he has not used since Tython; a flick of his palm, and the space between them warps in a shimmering stasis field of Force energy.

 

With another brisk wave, both blasters are wrenched from the Wookiee’s hands. They strike the barrier and shatter.

 

“Listen to me!”

 

Baring all his teeth, Chewbacca leers at Kylo as if he were a convenient bit of prey for him to toy with before he devours it whole.

 

“ _Listen!”_ Kylo thunders, swallowing against his wildly stampeding heart. Not thirty solar cycles ago, the same creature clamouring to rip him apart right now chased him through the tunnels of the Millennium Falcon in delirious games of Hunter, swooped him up into a shaggy hug and tickled him until he squealed. “I won’t -” 

 

_Thud._

 

The spectral manifestation ripples on impact as Chewbacca throws his entire bodyweight against it.

 

Keeping his gaze level and expressionless, Kylo tries again. “Stand down! You will not be harmed!”

 

 _Thud._ Force barriers never fail. This time, the Wookiee rams it with even greater force and rebounds just as hard, yelping in pain.

 

“I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have -”

 

 _Thud._ Chewbacca’s temple collides with the wall and he lets out a whine. His thoughts are leaden with revenge. There will be no tête-à-tête with the homicidal bastard dressed in black.

 

In desperation, Kylo throws back his head and grinds out a muddled string of Shyriiwook yips; words scarcely remembered from childhood. It’s a last resort. He pays no attention to the white armoured heads that turn toward him, stupefied. If the ‘troopers suspected him to be mentally deranged before, this display clearly dispels any doubt.

 

_Will not hurt sorry I Uncle Chewie forgive listen to me._

 

With a repulsed growl, the Wookiee’s gargantuan figure comes hurtling into the barricade once more. Another _thud_ , a splintering _crack._ This time the impact leaves a residue, mottled and bloody like the fresh laceration over Chewbacca’s shoulder, hovering between them. More moaning resounds in his ears, and it takes Kylo a moment to realise it’s coming from _him_ – defeated, almost mournful.

 

Chewbacca will break himself to get to Kylo.

 

“Will you stop and _karking listen?!_ ”

 

In the next moment a brownish haze blooms over the Wookiee’s head, dull and formless but definitely there. It’s subtle – even Chewbacca hasn’t registered it yet – and only clumps of tangled fleece atomising into the air, but soon it will be skin… and flesh… and bone.

 

Panic snaps through him. Snoke’s power was impossible to understand, best held at arm’s length – only now, it’s that same power feasting on Kylo from the inside and battling to get out. He’s helpless to control it.

 

So he does the only thing he can.

 

“Stun him,” he orders the ‘troopers. “ _Stun._ I need him alive.”

 

Without another glance, he spins on one booted heel and barrels away alone. In his wake, the muted pulse of stunfire reverberates through the passageway.

 

 _I need him alive... I need him_. His chest clenches on a sob. Grinding his molars, he quickens his pace and doesn’t bother to brush away the tears beading at the corners of his eyes, frantic to put as much distance between himself and the Wookiee as possible.

 

But disjointed memories keep coming. Furry fingers wrapped around his small ones, helping him steer the control yoke. Uncle Chewie, showing him the difference between a hydrospanner and a screwdriver, and which is most likely to keep Han’s rickety old freighter in one piece for one more mission. Uncle Chewie, belly-laughing at Ben’s earliest attempts at Shyriiwook, sounding more like nerfmilk being gargled. Memories sealed under a tight lid of denial. Until today.

 

A tear spills down his cheek. He feels the muscles of his chin trembling like a small child and looks toward the illumination panels, as if the artificial light might be soothing. Static hissing rings in his ears, the by-product of constant fear, barely-contained rage, the soundless war between himself and a power he cannot control. A theft of spirit. An injury no other person can see.

 

Kylo hears his own sobs rising up, raw from the inside. People’s shells harden or they fracture. Rounding a corner, he charges ahead without looking.

 

It’s like blundering straight into the sun.

 

Or maybe an she’s angel, from the moons of Iego – dressed entirely in white, a leather armband wound across her right deltoid. _The girl I’ve heard so much about._

 

She doesn’t flee. She doesn’t draw her blade.

 

What she does, without a word, is hold out her arms and catch him.

 

“ _Rey,”_ he manages, and the floodgates burst. 

 

Trembling violently, he sags against her and weeps. Tears cascade down his face and ugly, heaving sobs tear from his throat. His knees give way and he sinks at her feet, moving his hands up to clutch her hips like a lover, or a supplicant, or both.

 

If she were to ignite her lightsaber and spear him through the ribs, he wouldn’t resist. He’d welcome it. Forgive her for it. His broad shoulders shake as she wraps her arms around them and cradles his head against her chest.

 

Rey’s body is already familiar – but this is the first time Kylo really _feels_ it, lean and muscular against his own. The one perfect thing in his life he has not driven away.

 

It’s like coming home.

 

Just her touch makes the battlecruiser somehow brighter, his future within its walls seeming a little less bleak. The world stops still on its axis. No matter when the end comes, it will be too soon.

 

She rocks him slowly, letting his tears soak into her tunic.

 

“I’ll help you,” is all she finally whispers, one hand coming up to stroke his hair, the other rubbing gentle circles into his back.

 

 _I’m beyond help_ , he thinks, knowing that she hears it but drawing her closer anyway. Part of him clings to that tenuous reassurance. Just having her in his arms calls to that last vestige of humanity the darkness has yet to consume. She presses a soft kiss to his hairline. It’s sweet, and warm, and a little ticklish. Unexpected, but not unwelcome.

 

For a long time they stay like that, locked together in the passageway. Letting themselves experience their first real embrace.

 

 

~

 

 

_The temple is no place for a padawan to seek peace. It should be an anchor, a place of light and sanctuary, a place to be welcomed and soothed, content simply to dwell in these hallowed halls. A pillar in one’s hurricane. In truth, the “temple” could have been more aptly named as a house of torture, for its removal of any hope of peace. It is there that Pla Nel resides, deep in a meditative trance; Facing the Mirror._

 

_Ben is the first to hear the screaming from within its walls._

 

_Extinguishing his lightsaber, he throws a worried glance at Byt then turns to face the edifice, straining to listen. Sinya quickly follows suit, then all ten of the others, stunned into slack-jawed silence._

 

_It’s Pla Nel – but there are at least twenty voices clamouring simultaneously, perhaps more. Their wraithlike moans reverberate off stone pillars and ripple up his spine. A guttural low roar, a child, male and female, inhuman and metallic together in a terrifying cacophony._

 

“ _Baroo tog Skywalker,” Haal mutters._

 

“ _No. Skywalker_ did _this,” Ben snarls back, ignoring Haal’s feeble stab at lightening the atmosphere. “He wasn’t ready.”_

 

_Eleven padawans stand stock-still, frozen in horror._

 

_But not Ben._

 

_Without bothering to belt his lightsaber, he pivots on one heel and breaks into a run, instinct propelling his body forward._

 

_It takes seconds to close the distance between their duelling ring and the temple. Its heavy doors don’t budge under his momentum as he ploughs into them full-tilt. He could blast them off their hinges with the Force, or plunge his blade into the tempered Ak wood – but Master would have his head. Instead, he pounds on them frantically with one fist._

 

“ _Pla Nel!”_

 

_His only answer is a chorus of laughter, animalistic brays, tortured wailing._

 

_Ben thumps harder. “PLA NEL!”_

 

_It’s no use. Retreating a step, he raises a palm, fingers splayed and ready to smash open the entryway when he feels long talons grab his shoulder._

 

“ _Nerra. Wait.”_

 

_Twisting, he tilts his head back to glare at Byt. Panic crawls up his throat. “Help me!” he bellows, unsheathing his saber._

 

_Byt’s grip tightens. “Fear not. Master Skywalker is with him.”_

 

“ _Frack Skywalker!”_

 

“ _The master always oversees a Trial of Spirit to intervene, should the student push themselves too far.” The Twi’lek is trying to be calm, but Ben can hear the strain in his voice. “Frightening to witness, yes - but Pla Nel shall emerge stronger for it. Closer to becoming the Jedi knight he is destined to be.”_

 

_Ben scowls and shakes off his restraining hand. “Then what do you call this?!”_

 

“ _A rite of passage,” Byt placates._

 

“ _It’s insanity, and you know it! That’s not our brother in there.”_

 

“ _He faces the darkness within his soul, his own inner fears and demons. Master shall return him to himself. Have faith.”_

 

“ _E chu ta, nerra! I have -” Ben hisses back, but bites his tongue at the expression of disappointment washing across Byt’s cerulean features, eyebrows rising minutely when he realises what his brother is about to say._

 

I have no faith in Luke Skywalker.

 

_There’s no chance of intervention. As far as Byt is concerned, this is Luke’s show. Let him have all the glory, if there’s any to be had in a disaster like this._

 

“ _If not Master Skywalker, who among us possesses the strength of spirit to guide him back?” Byt reprimands gruffly. “Do_ you?”

 

_Ben opens his mouth to argue, but the words form and die on his lips._

 

“ _Master has no heir; he has us. His blood flows through your veins. Luke Skywalker is your kin, Ben, which is more than most of us have.”_

 

_With a mumbled apology, he lets the Twi’lek take his arm and lead him back to their motley crew, his eyes downcast._

 

 _Combat sparring resumes with Tchock-Melor as battlemaster. He’s distracted – they all are - their duelling half-hearted, their usual bellyaching and good-natured scuffles forgotten. Even their surrounds seem shocked into silence; no birdsong from the forest, no insects chirruping. Only that broken, feral_ thing _within the temple walls. They listen over the buzzing drone of their sabers, exchanging uneasy looks between blows. Collectively holding their breaths, they listen. First to the ear-splitting ruckus from behind those doors, then to the chilling silence that follows. Ben doesn’t know which is more frightening._

 

_At sundown, Pla Nel emerges from the temple a changed man._

 

_His silver-black eyes are glazed over, facial appendages hanging limp, plodding behind Skywalker like a mindless zombie. Outwardly healed, but entrapped in a prison without walls. His voice is once again his own, through the vocoder of his breathing apparatus - but his mind is gone._

 

_He failed the trial, Master Skywalker reports sadly. As if that exonerates him for everything._

 

_Time passes; it unbends and stretches out. In the weeks and months that follow, Ben watches his one-time brother whisper demented secrets, cry for his mother and cackle wildly at nothing, always wrapped in a florid hallucination. His life force is twisted at some unknown juncture. Through a strict regime of guided meditation, Luke gradually brings him back to something close to normalcy._

 

_Of course, the old man is far too enamoured of his own self-importance to admit he has made an unforgivable mistake. Because - he’s Luke Skywalker. Jedi Master. A legend. Every day, the fabric of civility frays a little more._

 

_And Pla Nel is never the same._

 

 _Some days, when he can’t hear anything beyond the shriek of dark power in his ears, Ben wonders what would happen if_ he _Faced the Mirror. Maybe his own voice already sounds bitonal to the others; the ordinary voice of Senator Organa’s inconvenient son and a deeper, magisterial one. Very much that of someone in complete control._ The finest sculptor cannot fashion a masterpiece from poor materials, _it whispers to him in the night._ He must have something pure, something strong, something unbreakable with which to work. I have – you.

 

_It promises unfathomable power beyond anything Luke could ever impart, which in this moment, seems insubstantial. Perhaps whatever madness claimed his brother also lies in wait for Ben._

 

_Perhaps, one day, it will awaken – open its jaws and howl._

 

 

_~_

 

 

Alone in his sleeper, Kylo replays the night’s events.

 

That crazed, shocked, overwhelmed joy at colliding with her in the passageway, warm bandaged arms coming tight around him.

 

Sparring with her was more invigorating than any droid or simulcrum. Rey’s skills with a lightsaber have increased exponentially. They easily outstrip his. She fights with preternatural speed, every feint and lunge perfectly calculated. Training with whichever dullards the Resistance could offer has not blunted her abilities in combat; even with her eyes closed, she knew where and how to move, sensing the ebb and flow of the fight.

 

He pictures her muscles rolling as she spun and kicked and sliced at him, the fluidity of her body, golden skin scalding hot and shimmering with sweat. The way she moved was downright distracting. He’d wanted to lick her. Everywhere.

 

Within minutes, she’d _annihilated_ him - ripped his sword from his grip and sent it flying. Nothing could have been more satisfying.

 

By the time they called it quits he was so hard it hurt, bulging against the zipper of his breeches.

 

Dining together was another unexpected thrill; she attacks any meal placed in front of her with savage gusto. She’d hummed with pleasure at her first taste of real tailring bacon. It was the loveliest sound he’d ever heard.

 

This could be her life, if she chooses to stay.

 

After, they’d stumbled back to his quarters by glowrod and lingered awkwardly outside, her expression tense in the halogen beam. For a split second she felt it, vibrating between them when his voice caressed her mind.

 

_Will you…_

 

It felt like all of the air was being sucked away.

 

A second’s hesitation was all it took.

 

To ask her to stay would have been forgetting his place, daring to believe himself her equal. Crossing a line he probably shouldn’t. He hasn’t earned that level of trust.

 

 _Guests' quarters._ Kylo’s tone sounded shaky, even to his own ears. _Next cabin down the hall._ Lifting one hand to kiss to her knuckles softly – like a gentleman should - he’d slipped a datacard into her palm.

 

It was a start.

 

He senses her Force signature now, a fiery supernova aboard his warship, so close yet so remote. There’s no piece of her he doesn’t want with every screaming inch. _His_ Rey, beautiful and unattainable. Is she still awake? Do her thoughts stray to him? Wondering if she’ll sense it, he lets his hand drift down to stroke himself with lazy movements. Behind his eyelids, the crimson thread pulses faster.

 

The sound of a datacard failing on a magnolock mechanism snaps him out of his reverie.

 

At the second beep, he jolts upright.

 

By the third, he has shimmied back into his sleeping pants and springs for the pneumatic door.

 

Apparently the security panel takes too long for Rey. She flings the door open with the Force, sending gears and locks crunching, freezing when she senses him _right there_ , his body heat so close that it rolls along her spine.

 

A soundless minute goes by before she speaks.

 

“I… I forgot.. something.”

 

Kylo’s lips quirk in amusement. “You did?”

 

“Guess I don’t know my own strength,” she adds sheepishly, and he can almost see the cogs churning in her beautiful, stubborn head. This isn’t an ambush. This is… something else.

 

Past the first moment of paralysis, he steps in closer and snakes an arm around her waist, shushing her as she stumbles over an apology.

 

“You forgot to break down my door?” he whispers, and she huffs out a small laugh. She’s warm, he realises immediately. Warmer than through the bond. Her scent is intoxicating. Every sense is heightened, everything more vivid.

 

“No.” She’s tense, but makes no effort to move away. “Your fa– Han Solo’s lucky dice. They’re yours.”

 

He almost laughs aloud. What a moron he'd been, stonewalling her advances the first time she tried to hand them over. For once in his life, he truly understands what it means to be so lucky he can scarcely believe it.

 

Capturing her hand, he feels the raw power vibrating at the end of her fingertips and takes the aurodium dice, placing them onto the armoire beside the door.

 

“Thank you, Rey.”

 

“You’re welcome.” There’s a strange edge to her voice.

 

Another pause, longer this time. Nervous energy surges into the Force. As if the dice were a feeble excuse to test the waters. An afterthought.

 

Slowly, deliberately, he slides his palm across her shoulders to cup the nape of her neck and stroke his thumb along her jawline. Heat ripples through her at the touch.

 

Lowering his head to her ear, he murmurs, “Anything else?”

 

“I wrecked your door.”

 

He chuckles, feeling her shiver beneath his palm. Emboldened, he takes her earlobe between his teeth, a light tug followed by a sweep of his tongue.

 

“ _Ah_ … I...”

 

Rey’s hands are gentle around his waist, but the rhythm of her heartbeat leaps to sublightspeed when he licks a clean line over her pulse point and blows on the wet trail. “Say it."

 

“Ben… what we spoke about… um, that time…”

 

He pulls her body closer so she can feel his hard length pressing into her hipbone. “Say it.”

 

This time he grazes the sharp points of his canines against her neck, then bites into the soft skin and sucks, hard. Hard enough to leave a mark. Her shocked, delighted cry makes his veins sizzle.

 

“ _Say it.”_

 

The line of her shoulders, her jaw – she’s so tightly wound. He soothes the bite with his tongue, lapping gently. One hand comes up to tangle into her hair, still damp from the ‘fresher, while the other skirts the front of her tunic to catch under her breast. Teasing, not quite touching.

 

Probing her thoughts now makes him shudder and strain against his sleeping pants. She’s imagining that skilful, velvety-soft tongue tasting her where she was touching herself, just now, there in the next chamber.

 

“ _Say it.”_ His whisper compels surrender. Watching her, the glint of her eyes in the low light, he feels her reserve slipping away. With his mouth still latched onto her throat, he grinds against her hip and she gasps.

 

“I changed my mind.” There’s an undercurrent of tentativeness to her voice. She so badly wants to trust him – but it’s something different, something primal, that has driven her here. Coupled with a misconception that she could subdue him at any time.

 

Feathering soft kisses along her cheekbone, he stops just short of her lips. “Tell me what you want.” His fingers slide up to cup her breast.

 

“I want...” She swallows, hard. Twice.

 

He squeezes gently through thin fabric and her breath hitches. “Tell me.”

 

“I want... my turn.”

 

Kylo doesn’t deserve this, he knows. But he’ll take it, selfishly, take everything she offers him. Craving power has always seemed significantly less dangerous than craving _someone._ “Your turn,” he breathes against her cheek.

 

Hesitation seeps through her faltering mental walls. Yes, she can feel him – her hot little hands tracing the contours of his bare back, every crevasse, each line of his physique. His heartbeat, thundering against her ribcage. His erection pressing into her stomach. Tilting her head, she rises onto tiptoe.

 

The next moment, shadows take his vision and wet heat takes his lips.

 

Their first real kiss.

 

Remembering. Discovering. Familiar and entirely new.

 

For every intimate moment though the connection, Kylo is completely unprepared for this. Never could he have imagined how warm her mouth might feel, how sweet she would taste, how something so simple could rob his brain of all coherent thought.

 

In that single moment, time stops. He doesn’t care about the war raging around them. There’s no Force, no death, no suffering. Just them.

 

Maddened with want, he slips his hands under her flimsy layers to feel her perfect softness. She’s never been touched – _really_ touched. Rey jolts against him as he palms her breast and deepens the kiss, nipping at her lips, licking them open and drawing his tongue over her teeth.

 

A kiss like this is a beginning, a promise of much more to come.

 

Every sensation flows through him as vividly as if it were his own, so closely attuned to her body. It’s so clear how it will be between them, in the way she squirms, the way her tongue brushes his, the damp heat pulsing between her legs that she can’t quite understand. Their breathing is erratic, loud in the silence of the corridor.

 

“I can feel you,” he hums, reaching between them to grip his cock, right around the base. “Can... can you feel this?”

 

She nods, breathless, jerking again when he gives himself a hard stroke.

 

It’s - beyond anything.

 

He could melt into her, just like this.

 

“Let me touch you.” He kisses her again, sloppy and urgent. “Let me do this – to you.”

 

When she doesn’t refuse, he presses a thumb between her legs, brushing against cloth already damp with her arousal. Her muscles pull taut and she exhales in a rush – _stars,_ she’s imagined this before. Every carnal fantasy buried deep in her subconscious flashes before his eyes. Of Ben, gathering her in the cradle of his arms and making love to her, slow and sweet. Of a shy, docile Ben, of riding him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. Driving that dream one step further. And of darker fancies she'll never acknowledge, even to herself; of a brutal, heartless fuck, his huge body denying her movement against Skywalker's podium, his hips snapping into her from behind. Pounding her into the wood until she forgets that letting the enemy use her for his pleasure is a grievous betrayal. 

 

At his will, her tunic rips down the centre, exposing her pert breasts to the air.

 

“Ben -” The chill must bring her back to herself for an instant, because anxiety spikes through the bond.

 

Kneeling at her feet, he pushes against the small of her back to arch her body into him, finding her breast in the dark and closing his mouth around it. Everything is new for her – his teeth, his lips, that wonderful, sensuous suction. She hadn’t known. Hadn’t known this part of her could be so sensitive. There’s _so much_ to teach her. He smiles at the thought, enjoying the frantic mewling sounds she makes when he drags his tongue against her nipple, the way her belly clenches when he bites. Pleasure and pain together.

 

And still, she is afraid.

 

“Please, go slow,” she whispers, trembling everywhere. “Be gentle.”

 

He moves to nuzzle the valley between her breasts and drives deeper into her mind, goosebumps and sweat prickling at her skin and and fear, fear that it will hurt, fear of the unknown and that nothing will be the same.

 

“No pain. Never for you,” he murmurs, his gut twisting. _Don’t you see you’re driving me mad?_

 

 

~

 

 

This… _This._ It’s everything.

 

Better than any dream. The Force flows between them in tidal waves of pleasure he can actually _see._

 

Sprawled on his sleeper, Rey’s lissom body is completely bare to him, her small breasts shaking with each nervous breath. With her legs parted he can see how swollen and plump she is already, glistening with excitement that matches his own.

 

It almost undoes his resolve.

 

“You’ve… you’ve done this before,” she whispers.

 

It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like this is a secret, just for them. For all his experience, it feels like he’s never done anything _remotely_ like this.

 

He lifts her arms above her head, one hand closing around her crossed wrists to hold them down. It would be so easy to paralyse her here, take everything he needs by force. But it would never be enough. Having this captivating creature splayed out helplessly, _willingly_ – it ruins him.

 

His first human woman. Maybe his last.

 

“Stay like this.” The command comes out sounding like a plea.

 

This isn’t about control. It isn’t about the things he wants to do to her. Not entirely. She could dislodge herself with the flicker of a thought – but he _needs_ to have this. Just for a little while.

 

“You have no idea how good I can make you feel _,_ ” he croons. When she nods assent he lets go, replacing his hand with the Force. He wants free rein to touch. Taste. Worship her, like she deserves.

 

Slinking down, he settles himself between her legs and meets her gaze, wordlessly asking permission. She’s biting into her lip, her whole body quivering, but she gives another fitful nod. _Ripe,_ he thinks, dark eyes travelling over her downy triangle of pubic hair to the wrinkled pink flesh below. _Like mujafruit._ Slowly, he pulls one of her milky-smooth thighs over each shoulder, then splays a hand in the hollow between her hipbones to keep her still.

 

Rey’s mind races with frantic anticipation, but she remains just as he’s left her – hands trussed together above her head. Her first surrender of many, he hopes.

 

Invading her stream of consciousness is an unnerving surprise; she’s _admiring_ him. Through Rey’s eyes, he sees his own wide, sculpted torso, his muscular arms flexing, the moles she’d likened to constellations in the sky. How huge and solid and _real_ he is, how deftly he handles her. Like he’ll know exactly what to do. Laid bare with their roles reversed, she considers his thick shaft and wonders _how is something that big supposed to fit -_

 

Stars, if _that_ doesn’t swell his ego. Smirking, he dips his face to her drenched folds, savouring the scent of her arousal. _So_ ready, and he’s barely touched her.

 

_You’re already wet for me._

 

_Ben... I’ve never done this before._

 

_You don’t have to do anything. Let me make you feel good._

 

_But –_

 

There’s a pang of jealousy, his dextrous hands reminding her of all the times he’s done this before, mixed with another, uglier emotion. Inadequacy. Remembering how different it was with the violet-skinned Keshiri, her shameless confidence in taking pleasure from him. Doubting whether a scrawny virgin from nowhere could possibly be enough.

 

Maker, what an idiot he was, sharing his most sordid memories.

 

“Don’t,” he hums, placing a chaste kiss on her mound. “Don’t ever, ever do that. You’re perfect. Beyond comparison.”

 

He sinks lower, full lips enveloping her sex completely, making her gasp. His tongue licks a broad stroke to collect the juices he finds within, swiping up one of her labia and down the other.

 

Her taste is potent, devastatingly addictive, like pure firespice.

 

Savouring it, he licks voraciously, hearing his true name fall like a prayer from her lips. His gaze darts up to her invisible restraints, and no – she hasn’t freed herself, but she’s writhing in the silken sheets. The tickling sensation of newness makes all of her nerves spark like exposed wires. She wants her hands back, wants to climb astride him and make him come apart, make their shared dream a reality.

 

“ _Stay like this_ ,” he growls, returning his tongue to her folds. He laves up her centre then hones in on the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex. Tight swirls, long sweeping strokes, setting a torturous pace. Chasing that thrill without reservation. Letting go of her thigh, he moves a hand to stroke at her slit.

 

With a strangled moan, she bucks her hips at her sudden awareness of his large finger, running against her seam.

 

 _Frack,_ it’s already so good.

 

And then – then, his tongue slips inside of her. Dipping in and out, circling and lapping. The bond glows brighter with every passing second, and she inhales sharply – the wet pressure of being invaded, the shock of him doing something like _that_. Stars bloom and burst before her eyes.

 

“ _Unnh –_ Ben, _Ben -”_

 

Hearing her keen out his name nearly sends him over the edge. It’s giddying and terrifying for her, surrendering her body so completely, and Kylo drinks it all in. He can feel the hot coil below her stomach, winding tighter and tighter with every sweet assault of his tongue.

 

“Shh.” His lips brush her centre as he speaks, eliciting another exquisite shudder. “Close your eyes.”

 

With that, he suckles at her clit and slides a finger into her, then two. The stretch makes her whimper, unfamiliar fullness and friction as he begins to stroke. She’s so slick. So deliciously hot and tight. Her heels dig into his back and her entire body goes rigid as he works her, relishing the crescendo of her cries.

 

Straying only to lap at her drenched folds, he fucks her slowly with his fingers. They glisten with her arousal as he enters her and withdraws, enters and withdraws.

 

Something transcendent is just on the crest of happening.

 

“I want to do this to you, _every_ -” his fingers disappear again and she rolls her hips to meet his thrust - “ _single -_ ” she’s panting, shallow and ragged - “ _night._ ” Her mind stutters with the roughness of his digits, his mouth… _Gods,_ his _mouth..._ and then… nothing at all.

 

With a breathless wail, her thoughts liquefy.

 

_BenBenBen -_

 

He thrusts into her harder, feeling her clench around his fingers.

 

_Let it happen._

 

Her eyes gloss over, head thrashing uselessly from side to side on his pillow, every muscle tight as a bowstring. Drunken arousal floods his consciousness.

 

Then Kylo curves his fingers inside like he’s beckoning to her and everything – _everything_ – in Rey’s body convulses, hard. Her walls flutter around his fingers and she leaks into his mouth, screaming out her orgasm.

 

A blinding rush of pleasure rips through the bond, driving him to the brink of his own climax.

 

In the pitch-black chamber, something explodes. Fragments of whatever it is tinkle as they strike the walls and fall. It feels as if the whole chamber suddenly cants to the right, the whole kriffing _Star Destroyer;_ a crowning touch of the night’s surrealism.

 

Self-satisfied, he simpers and lays a wet, reverent kiss on her already oversensitive flesh.

 

Then another. And another.

 

Her chants of _please, please, please_ degenerate into a frenzied, incoherent babble. Her thighs are quaking under his relentless ministrations; it’s just this side of too much for her.

 

A sharp thrust in the Force knocks the breath from his lungs. He’s overpowered. Her nails come down to rake through his hair, fingers clenching and tugging hard, frantic to draw him back up. Craving something more. Something unnameable. His weeping member vehemently protests its neglect.

 

_Ben come here please come here come to me_

 

Just a kitten-lick to her clit is enough to make her toes curl. _It’ll hurt._

 

_I don’t kriffing care! I want all of you -_

 

Kylo chuckles against her skin. “Greedy.”

 

She stills. _Your turn your turn your turn_ , her addled mind screams.

 

“No. Once isn’t enough. Never enough.”

 

Her hazel eyes fly wide.

 

"Tonight, Rey, you are mine. _Mine_ to taste - _mine_ to indulge -" another rough drag of his tongue, and she moans - " and I'm going to make you come, and come, and come. Give me... _more."_ He marvels at the pink, glistening mess he’s made of her cunt and thinks he’d like to crawl up inside her. Eat her alive. The room starts to spin. Adrenaline lashes through him at the absolute certainty that yes, he _will_ hurt her – and relish every karking second of it.

 

But not tonight.

 

Tonight is just for her.

 

 

~

 

 

With his archenemy laid out and vulnerable in silken sheets, the darkness clamours again for the surface.

 

Too many storms can burst any dam. _Pathetic fool_ , it berates. _Destroy her, body and spirit. Take whatever you want._ A dangerous warmth pools at the base of his spine. It wants to restrain her, tear apart her flesh and swallow her whole. Split her open on his cock and fuck her until her teeth rattle.

 

Never in his life has Kylo felt so divided as right now.

 

After every painful thing he’s already done, he refuses to hurt her in this, too, the most intimate way possible. Her virginity is no precious jewel for him to plunder. He’s unworthy of one so pure.

 

Watching Rey sleep soundly, he wonders how it’s possible - for all the atrocities he’s committed as a cryptid of the dark side - that something so flawless could come crashing into his life from across the galaxy, from the swirling deserts of Jakku. With this woman by his side, the universe is full of potential.

 

A lifetime with her would be bliss. Contentment. There’s an undefinable magic about her that surpasses the Force.

 

 _I will have no other_ , he thinks. _It will always be you._

 

At the thought, Rey’s eyelids flutter open.

 

“Where am I?” she mumbles.

 

This is where she’ll take it all in – her terrible lapse in judgement coming here, his hideous, disfigured body… everything she’d let him do to her. Holding a breath, he gently tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re my guest.”

 

It takes a moment for her to regain her bearings. A silence stretches as the events of last night unravel. Before he can cover up, her gaze wanders down his naked form, lingering at his lips, his pectorals, his swollen shaft – standing at full mast, the head flushed and angry. Unsatiated.

 

“Ah… How long have I been asleep?” Fresh colour rises to her cheeks.

 

“Not long. A few hours.”

 

“Is this a dream?” she purrs, almost too softly to hear.

 

Arms folded strategically over his erection, he feels heat creep up to the tips of his ears. Who is this girl that has reduced the most powerful man in the galaxy to a lovesick, horny teenager? “No.”

 

“Why are you hiding? I want to see you.”

 

“N- no.”

 

“Ben,” she whispers, “don’t cover up. Not for me.” Naked and fearless, she reaches for him. There it is – the scar she’d concealed under a leather armband, a memory of that first warm breach between them etched into her skin. “Come here.”

 

“I don't want to be the reason you hurt.” His lips quiver around the phrase. “I promised -”

 

“I'm stronger than you think. And... I trust you.”

 

The words settle between them, heavy in the silence that follows. Only a fool would trust Kylo Ren. He’ll drag her into hell.

 

“I’m not who you think I am,” he rasps. “I’m a monster.”

 

“Yes. You are.” She sucks her lip between her teeth, and yes - _definitely_ blushing. “But you’re also a man. I want _all_ of you, every part, the light and the dark. Just as you are. Just like this.”

 

Squeezing his eyes shut, he wraps his fingers around his girth and gives himself a few hard strokes, desperate to take the edge off. He wants more from her. Much more. More than she’s probably willing to give. He’ll violate her, and she’ll flee forever.

 

A quick peek at Rey straightens his spine – she’s transfixed by what he’s doing, quivering and rubbing her thighs together. Bold and naive, in equal parts.

 

“I’m not afraid of you.” Her lips twitch into a hopeful half-smile.

 

A breath. “Maybe you should be.”

 

Her smile broadens, dimpling her cheeks. “I’m not, Ben. Come here.” _I didn’t haul myself halfway across the cosmos just to eat scrambled eggs and clobber you with a training saber,_ she adds silently. _Although both were pretty great._

 

None of this could possibly be real, because he finds himself doing what he does best around her – losing control completely. All he can do is laugh. It’s a wild laugh, crazed and not really him. She’s tempting forces she could not possibly comprehend.

 

“ _Ben.”_

 

Her body is mouthwatering, all soft curves and sunkissed skin. Waiting. So ready for him.

 

 _Can you feel what I need from you? Let me have-_ He quashes the thought, but Rey hears it anyway and answers without hesitation.

 

_Yes._

 

Her eyes shine like veda pearls.

 

_Yes, Ben._

 

With that, the last shred of his self-restraint evaporates.

 

Onderon and Malastare can wait. He leaps at her like a manka cat to its kill.

 

The bedsprings recoil under his considerable bulk, bouncing her body completely off the mattress and making her squeal in delight. Eyes blazing, he scrambles over her until she’s caged in between his wrists and bent knees. The Force warps around him with dark intent.

 

Then her arms loop around his neck and pull him down, warm fingers tangle through his hair, and her legs curl around his calves, scorching-hot. Sensation takes over every inch of him.

 

Kylo stops teetering on the precipice of self-control, and plunges over the edge.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quotes:**  
>  Mary Oliver, _Blue Pastures_ (1995): "After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world."  
>  Sun Tzu, _The Art Of War_ (~5th century BC): "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle... Know thine enemy... In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."
> 
>  **Bothese Translation:**  
>  _Melan_ = Moons
> 
>  **Aqualish Translation:**  
>  _Baroo tog_ = Thank fuck for
> 
>  **Twi'leki/Ryl Translations:**  
>  _nerra_ = brother  
>  _numa_ = sister  
>  _Arni’soyacho_ = Thank you  
>  _Chuba_ = Hey
> 
>  **Huttese Translations:**  
>  _E chu ta_ = (expletive)  
>  _sleemo_ = slime


	29. Kc1 Ne2+

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This hesitancy to meet him again, face-to-face… it’s been a self-preservation thing. Like facing a deep chasm and teetering over the edge, with nothing to hold back the endless void if she tumbles in. Because once they went there - once they were this intimate - she would be in love with him.

 

 

 

 

“Your recruit has arrived, sir.”

 

The black-shrouded visitor’s fingers unclasp and he rises stiffly to his feet, visibly rankled at the interruption. As a boy, Petty Officer Thanisson heard other child-conscripts muttering amongst themselves with fear and awe about the fabled Knights of Ren, but never until now has he actually encountered one. He’d pictured plate-armour-clad warriors wielding vibroblades, mounted on horseback. Besides, hadn’t Kylo Ren executed them all?

 

He flinches – first at the Knight’s impossible height, then at the flash of incandescent yellow eyes beneath his cowl.

 

Perhaps the bridge’s environmental sensors are malfunctioning, because the ambient temperature is suddenly near-freezing. The figure’s low rumble is barely audible. _“My_ recruit?”

 

“I will escort you to the Imperial Officer Training Academy,” Thanisson continues, suppressing the urge to tuck tail and flee instead. “Follow me, sir.”

 

“There has been a misreckoning,” the creature booms. “Leave me be.”

 

Heart pounding, Thanisson glances back across the gangway, to safety - but remains rooted to the spot. Better to face this monolithic spectre than incur the Supreme Leader’s wrath for disobedience. “Lord Ren believes you will be eager to do the induction,” he squeaks. “This is a special case. The subject is of mature age, and will be joining our crew following the dissolution of her own consortium.”

 

“Of whom do you speak?”

 

“An Imroosian female. Former leader of Crimson -” He chokes on his words as the shadow flies at him faster than humanly possible, stopping just short of collision.

 

Lifting one robotic hand, the Knight retracts his hood. His serpentine head-tails and mannerly, serrated smile do even less to set Thanisson at ease. “Splendid,” he utters. “Our Supreme Leader is generous indeed. And I am famished.”

 

 

~

 

 

 _Maker,_ he’s so real it hurts.

 

Her indomitable, broken, perfect Ben.

 

A swarm of chaotic thought skips through her brain. This hesitancy to meet him again, face-to-face… it’s been a self-preservation thing. Like facing a deep chasm and teetering over the edge, with nothing to hold back the endless void if she tumbles in. Because once they went there - once they were this intimate - she would be in love with him.

 

Every kiss has a raw intensity. It feels like being lost, everything forgotten but the man above her. _Yes. This. This_ is what she needs. This is what’s going to sweep away the fear and uncertainty of the last week. She loves his plush lips, the welcome invasion of his tongue in her mouth. She loves how his thick hair tangles between her fingers. And his body – she loves how the muscles of his back ripple beneath her palms. He looks… _delicious._ Ruinous. All of his perfection. All for her.

 

He makes her cling to the hope that one day someone will _stay,_ that this could be an end to a life of wasted days, unlived and unloved. And he makes her afraid – afraid that he’ll be taken away, like everything else in her life. Her greatest weakness. She loves this man down to the blood and marrow. More than life itself. _The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead._

 

“Get on your knees,” he snarls in her ear.

 

And just like that, he’s not Ben any more.

 

Abruptly, he pulls back and rises above her, a flicker of irritation skittering across the bond when she doesn’t immediately obey. Without the scorching heat of his skin, she shivers as cold air skates across her breasts. His muscles bunch as he slides through silk, coming to rest level with her feet, his molten eyes never leaving hers.

 

“ _On your knees!"_ he grates again, and her insides writhe with the possibility that she’s gone too far.

 

Without further ado, her body is yanked into the air by a force unseen, flipped as easily as a rag-doll, and flung face-first back onto the bed. No sooner is she released than Ben’s strong hands grip her hips and yank her up onto her knees.

 

It’s all happening too fast.

 

The mattress dips beneath his considerable bulk as he kneels squarely behind her, one huge hand splayed between her shoulder blades to force her down and the other clutching her hipbone, fingers digging into pliant flesh. For one heart-stopping instant she feels the tip of him nudge her entrance and remembers how impossibly large he is, how exaggerated their size difference seemed last night. Her jaw still aches a little from straining to accommodate his girth. This will hurt. Really hurt. A low growl escapes his throat at the contact.

 

“Wait-”

 

“ _Quiet!”_

 

Trying to steady her shallow breaths, she lunges forward instinctively – but her limbs refuse to cooperate. It isn’t just his hulking black figure pinning her down. It’s _more._ She tries to turn, to pull away, but it’s as if her body is tied down by invisible threads. Immobilised completely, she can only kneel helplessly like a bondslave cowering before their master. “Please,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut.

 

“You want this.” There’s an edge to his voice. She can hear the hysteria bubbling up. His hands are shaky and ice-cold.

 

Their lovemaking has always been there, pulsating sweetly in her fantasies, but all of the times she’s replayed it, never brutal… forced... anonymous. She wants to be cherished, broken and remade by him. Not this kind of faceless, animalistic rutting. Kylo Ren has hurt her in so many horrible ways already, but this might be among the very worst. The thought stretches her heart full of _something,_ then shatters it that much harder.

 

“Ben,” she begins, without knowing how to continue. _I’m scared. You’re my first. I need for this to mean something._ The words sound maudlin and pitiful, even in her own mind.

 

Lifting her hips with the deftness of someone who’s done this a thousand times before, he slides his hard length slowly between her folds, coating himself with her juices, and groans – an abnormally deep timbre that’s not _his_ voice. His ministrations last night – _all_ night – have left her oversensitive, slick and slippery, and she wails softly against the wet friction as he glides back and forth, back and forth in a pace dangerously close to fucking. The ridged head of his cock rolls against her clit with every languid stroke until that tight coil begins to wind in the pit of her stomach.

 

“N- not like this,” she gasps out.

 

His palm drifts up to wrap loosely around the column her throat. His fingers are icy, and she bites her lip to stifle a cry as they tighten ever so slightly. A telltale warmth pools between her thighs and her hands fist in the sheets. In her ears, her pulse gallops so loudly it’s almost visible.

 

This can’t be natural – being this helpless shouldn’t feel so exhilarating. Her body is responding to him even as her mind reels in protest.

 

_Hands._

 

She can move.

 

When she grabs his wrist, it feels like she’s reaching out across the galaxy. Her fingertips tremble as she smooths them over his gelid skin, a counterpoint to the sharp intake of his breath.

 

Above her, Ben makes a noise like a wounded animal and goes still.

 

Time stops.

 

Clutching his wrist for dear life, Rey senses a change in the air. A change in _her._ Warmth floods back into his palms and his iron grip slackens. A long near-silence passes with only the faint whir of environmental sensors and ion engines idling, before his hand leaves her windpipe.

 

“Do you see them?” she whimpers, muffled by the pillow.

 

Two hot tears land on her lower back, leaving streaks down the slope of her buttocks. When he finally speaks again, his voice is muted and unsteady.

 

“They...”

 

As soon as the crippling Force-hold disentangles itself from her body, she rolls over to face him. At first, Ben is just a mammoth silhouette towering above her, but the sharp angles of his nose and jaw gradually take shape as her vision reacclimatises to the dim interior. A dozen emotions flash through his eyes.

 

“They– they...” he stammers.

 

“They look like you.” It’s not her normal voice. Not even close.

 

Without hesitation, she wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him down to lick at the seam of his lips. There's salt on his tongue. Tears, she realises. Her own tears. Or his. She knows what almost just happened. And she won’t let it mean the end.

 

“How do you want me to do this?” he mumbles into the dip of her collarbone.

 

"I… I don’t know.” Smoothing back his hair, she presses a soft kiss to his scarred, sweaty cheek. “I want to see your face... your eyes... when you, um...”

 

His exhale comes out shaky. “It would be… easier... like you were, on your hands and knees. Better, for you. To… take me inside.” One hand strays from the shimmersilk by her shoulder, trailing down between her breasts and dipping into the heat between her legs, into that secret place where only Ben has been.

 

“No,” she whispers. “Like this. You – _ah_ – you above me. Or – _ohhh_...” His thumb kneads clumsily at her already-swollen clit, making her hips buck. She’s soaked to her inner thighs. Warm, glossy, drenched beneath his exploring fingers.

 

“You’re...” He slides a thick digit inside of her, smooth and easy like hot water through snow. “...very wet.”

 

The rough pad of his fingertip finds that delicious spot deep inside and begins to rub. Her spine slackens and she finds herself rocking onto his hand, trying to match his rhythm. She’d thought she’d die earlier, the first time he spread her out and started doing _that_ with his mouth, but now her thighs tremble and she tries to open them wider. To invite him inside. His relentless friction is enough to drum tremors from her already heightened nerves - until her mind simply snaps, empty of coherent thought.

 

Then he climbs between her legs, and for a glorious moment her vision is taken up by the sight of his engorged length jutting from a thatch of black curls, thick and heavy and purplish-red. The veins at his temples stand out in sharp relief, sweat sheening his brow as if they had been sparring for hours.

 

At first, he doesn’t enter her. It must take every ounce of self-control he has not to. Hovering above, he wraps his hand around the base of his cock and rubs it back and forth along her cleft, letting her feel what he’s about to give her. Lost in sensation, she can only breathe the air between them, sweet and heavy.

 

“Are you sure?” he hisses, his whole body vibrating with tension.

 

Rey bites her lip, hooks her thighs around his waist and arches up to meet him. It’s all the permission he needs to take her body the way he wants.

 

Ben isn’t shy. Or careful. There’s a moment of pressure as the tip of his cock slowly breaches her, and Rey wills herself to relax, not to brace for it. But then – _then,_ he pushes inside and buries himself to the hilt. The sudden, foreign intrusion is probably more intense than she can bear. Her eyes scrunch shut and she pales, her body shocked into a defensive awareness. The pain makes it hard to breathe. It’s just as bad as Rose had warned – if not worse.

 

“ _K-Kriff,”_ he groans, sinking in deeper. “Oh, _Gods – fuck."_

 

He’s stretching her to the seams. In desperation, she reaches out through the bond.

 

It hits her like a tidal wave, engulfing her completely.

 

Incredible pleasure, rushing through Ben like a railspeeder. Sex, through his eyes - this is completely new territory. How snug and slick and kriffing _small_ she is, the way her insides drag against him, so tight it’s intoxicating. _Exquisite._

 

Maybe Rey would take this pain over and over to be able to feel this way, this deep-seated connection to him that she never imagined could exist between two people.

 

She remains silent, her spine arched taut like a bowstring, legs cinching against his lower back.

 

Ben’s tongue is warm beneath her ear. “Rey… are you… _fuck_ … all right?”

 

His crushed-velvet voice heats her blood and makes it race. It’s not all right. She’s spiralling out into oblivion. But she nods, unseeing.

 

“Breathe,” he whispers.

 

It feels like she needs to relearn how to breathe - it’s coming in hitching, shuddering gasps. Even with him seated fully inside, unmoving, she’s straining to adjust. She lifts a hand, closes it around his sweaty nape, sending her pain crackling through the bond. Ben shudders.

 

“Can… can I move?”

 

Rey nods again, frantic and wordless.

 

He withdraws and then drives in more vigorously, her lower half quivering to accommodate him. Again. And again. The pinching ache mellows into a smooth, pleasing stroke as he pumps in and out of her. He’s trying to be gentle, to keep a slow pace, and she loves him for it. Ben’s mouth is everywhere at once, feathering wet kisses over her sternum, her collarbone, the tears beading at the corners of her eyes, grunting a litany of curses into her ear.

 

It’s surreal. He’s _destroying_ her, and in this moment, she wants nothing more than to let him.

 

“Rey,” he rasps, “feel this. Feel _me._ ” Before she can process the words, he rolls his hips and plunges inside as hard as he can, hitting a place that makes her whimper. He’s wedged deep and stretching her to the point she should be breaking, but she lets go – dives into the bond and lets _his_ pleasure sweep over and drag her under. It’s probably only a fraction of what he’s experiencing… but it’s blinding in its intensity. Cool silk slides beneath her back in contrast to the burning weight crushing her into the mattress, and his breath is hot as he pants against the edge of her jaw.

 

 _Too much,_ her mind howls. _Too much too much too_ – oh. Oh.

 

He’s halfway to withdrawing when she lets out a strangled moan and her cunt suddenly contracts around him. Pleasure wells and washes against her edges – not Ben’s this time, but _hers._ It takes them both by surprise and his huge hands fly to her hipbones, bracing to ride her through it. The space between them grows sweat-slick and delicious.

 

Another thrust and liquid heat spreads over her belly, any pain dissolving into slick, hot bliss. It rips through the bond and Ben cries out, driving into her harder and faster, building the sensation between them in a great crescendo.

 

Electric currents scream white-hot through every nerve ending until she arches off the mattress, swept over by pleasure that pushes her beyond words. Something wonderful explodes in the pit of her stomach and she keens out his name, over and over.

 

Every long pull feels like it’s melting her spine. Behind her eyelids, whirling colours blossom and burst.

 

He doesn’t stop when unseen things start whizzing across the dim room and clattering into the walls, or when the sleeper frame bows underneath them with a metallic groan. He doesn’t stop when her legs begin to thrash wildly in the sheets, when she rakes her fingernails down his back and digs them into his buttocks, trying to pull him in deeper. His rhythm only becomes sloppy and imprecise when she crashes shamelessly into his thoughts.

 

But he doesn’t stop.

 

He grunts with every pulse of his hips, skidding along the explosive edge of his own climax but determined to draw out hers for as long as he can. It doesn’t fade. They give and take from the bond in a frenzied push-pull, and her moans roll heavy into the air as he rocks her through the fluttering upheaval of her orgasm.

 

It feels like the greatest triumph of his life to have this woman writhing and revelling in carnal delight underneath him, her small breasts jiggling with every heavy thrust. A waking fantasy. His cock glistens with her juices every time he withdraws. Everything is heightened to a chaotic state, the part of him still clawing at any shred of self-control almost completely overwhelmed. Her walls grip him so tightly that he sees stars, and he couldn’t stop now if he had to.

 

He would kill for this woman. Destroy the galaxy for her. _His;_ beautiful, perfect, and everything he will cling to for as long as he can.

 

All at once, Ben cups her chin to make sure she's looking directly into his eyes and jerks his hips, spastic and frantic - once, twice, again. Hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. His face is all flushed pale skin against dark waves, his pupils blown wide and dark. Every muscle pulls taut. Then, with a wordless cry, he withdraws. Thick ropes of his seed splatter across her belly.

 

Something deep in her chest purrs with satisfaction at the sight of him coming undone. He spins her world.

 

 _Her_ Ben.

 

And it’s _her_ Ben who collapses heavily onto her body, exhaling her name over and over into the pillow with each uncontrolled spasm.

 

 

~

 

 

When the aftershocks have quietened and the tempo of her heartbeat slows, she kisses his fingers one by one and lets him fold her against his chest. His body smells of fresh sweat and sex. There’s a dull throbbing between her legs that’s not entirely unpleasant, and his spend slides off her stomach onto the sheets.

 

There’s no strangeness in their silence. Just a soft, floating peace.

 

After a long moment has passed, his fingers thread through her damp hair and comb it gently away from her face.

 

“Are you… all right?” he mumbles.

 

“Mmm.” Idly, her fingertips ghost over the scars imprinted in his back. She knows them all by heart. The bond between them hums with contentment; perhaps every single living soul aboard the ship can sense it. Maybe the whole galaxy. The pure, uncomplicated love that rises up within her feels like a gift from the Force itself. “I thought everything would be different,” she murmurs, licking a droplet of sweat from his cheek. “After.”

 

“Different?”

 

“Your quarters, for one.” Ben’s sleeper is now cambered slightly head-down towards the deck, one of many casualties of their wanton surges of energy in the Force. His chamber door, which he’d wrenched shut with brute force at some point, buckles outward from the middle as if warped by some internal explosion.

 

Or – _many_ explosions. Wonderful ones.

 

He blows out a small laugh. “Nothing is irreplaceable.”

 

“And… us. Different.”

 

“How?”

 

 _Because there’s no going back from this,_ she thinks. _Because I’m in love with you._ Her throat feels as dry as the desert. “I don’t know.”

 

She isn’t certain Ben’s listening to her thoughts, but his grip tightens around her waist. _I don’t deserve… love. You. Any of it_.

 

Here comes the part where he’ll tell her it was fun while it lasted. Just another conquest. Back to being what they were before: mortal enemies at either side of a generations-old war. She’d never, never ask aloud; the answer is obvious, and it would be like a little death to face it directly. _You don’t love me._

 

 _I didn’t say that,_ she hears back.

 

For all of his ample experience, she can’t help but wonder if she’ll ever be enough. Her love. Her body. All she knows now is he wants to be held, and in that, she will always oblige him.

 

“Rey, I… I couldn’t control it... I almost… at the start...” His tone wavers. “Forgi-”

 

“Don’t apologise.”

 

“But-”

 

“I brought you back.”

 

Pulling her closer, he draws a shaky breath.

 

“I’ll always bring you back,” she whispers into his neck. “But that isn’t what I meant. About us being different.”

 

Not two standard months ago they’d clashed sabers in the blackened ruins of Seregar, each hell-bent on annihilating the other. Now, with him wrapped tightly around her, naked and basking in the afterglow of sexual release, the bond seems more open and vulnerable than Ben has ever allowed it to be.

 

“You’re mine,” she declares.

 

He kisses her temple and whispers, almost too quietly to hear, “I’ve always been yours.”

 

“What did you see, Ben? When we touched hands?”

 

“N- nothing.” His hand continues its passage up and down her back, smoothing his thumb along the notches of her spine. “What did you see?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

Pressing her lips into a line, she absently touches her flat belly, sticky with his seed. The future will unfurl as the Force wills. For a moment, Rey allows herself to think about _nothing._

 

_Beyond the boundaries of the settlement, abundant green spreads out as far as the eye can see. A childhood spent scrounging around the skeletons of junked spacecraft, with no value beyond what her nimble fingers can scavenge, doesn’t allow time for frivolous games. But Rey is hiding just the same, determined that her children will enjoy everything she never had. Slate-grey clouds shroud the sun in a veil, creating a maze of light and shadow amongst the towering crop._

 

_Evading Ben is easy. His Force signature blazes like a nova, orbited by two bright cosmic rays that weave between plants. And he’s laughing. How she has missed that laugh._

 

_Their youngest, a sable-haired toddler with limpid umber eyes, can’t quite grasp the rules of Hunter. Instead, she’s charging haphazardly through rows of skycorn as fast as her chubby legs will carry her. If her presence in the Force didn’t betray her location, her loud giggling certainly would. Ben lets her run free and gives chase after their firstborn instead. Her delighted squeal rings across the field when he swoops in to cradle her in a bear hug._

 

Ben’s voice is a little huskier than usual. “Rey?”

 

Her eyes flutter closed, warm contentment rolling through. It’s more than just the drugged haze that always comes with his presence; she’s bound to him inexorably. The Force's design, maybe – but it just feels _right._ As natural as breathing. Perhaps they shared the same vision this time, because the next entreaty to cross his lips is achingly familiar.

 

“Stay with me.”

 

“I -”

 

“Join me. Please.”

 

 

~

 

 

Whatever Poe Dameron had anticipated from being taken prisoner by the First Order – this isn’t it. Truth be told, there’d be worse ways to be incarcerated.

 

Sure, getting dragged into the Harbinger’s brig and transported at gunpoint, bound and gagged, to the Supreme Tyrant’s flagship – _that,_ he’d expected. In fact, he’d considered himself lucky the battlecraft hadn’t blasted his X-wing to smithereens.

 

But then, shit got weird.

 

There’s his `cell,’ for instance. Its floor is tiled in fine Selonian marble, which makes every step echo. A kriffing _chandelier_ casts rainbow colours across the cabin’s interior – Chobb’s knob, even the upper-crust folks on Yavin 4 can’t afford such opulence. Embroided silk couches surround a massive central viewscreen, and in one corner is a writing desk carved out of body-wood and finished with crimson granite. Ancient-looking imperial paintings hang from the walls. Even the plasteel door is engraved with swirls and elegant designs. Poe couldn’t help but gape at all the splendour.

 

It’s got to be some sort of trick, like a last supper before execution. That irascible pig will be waiting for him at the end of this. Past experience with the First Order has done nothing to disabuse him of that.

 

In six standard hours, he’s pounded on the door and bellowed until he was hoarse, scoured the cabin for anything that could be used as a weapon, paced the floorspace (more expansive than a get’shuk pitch), and eaten the whole contents of the fruit bowl – probably drugged or poisoned, but he didn’t care then, and still feels okay now. Finally, exasperated, he flicks on the holoprojector. It’s a rerun of C’ai’s favourite show; the episode where they restored a Nubian yacht, half-digested by a giant space slug, and souped it up with a hyperspace transport ring. He cranks up the volume, welcoming any distraction.

 

Outside, the emperor’s snowmen stop arguing over whether there’s turbulence in space or the Finalizer’s stabilisers are on the fritz.

 

Moments later, the pneumatic door hisses open. Two bucketbrains just stand there, pistols holstered at their hips, staring blankly into the chamber.

 

“Can I help you?” Poe grumbles, not bothering to get up.

 

Their white masks twist toward the viewscreen.

 

“... _gentlemen?_ ” he prompts sourly. Onscreen, a pudgy, three-eyed Gran is pointing out where the sleek chromium hull was partially dissolved by stomach acid. “If you think you’re gonna blow me to monoatomic dust, you’ve got another think coming.”

 

“Is that Flip My Ship?” Snowman Number One asks, unfazed.

 

“Frack off.”

 

“ _Told you_ this was the one.” The bigger ‘trooper elbows his offsider in the chestplate and shakes his head, clearly trying not to laugh. “Any chance we could watch?”

 

Poe stares at them in abject disbelief.

 

The shorter one earns another nudge. “Uh… please?” he tries.

 

“Any chance of, _oh, I dunno_ \- letting me go?”

 

He’s met with a dismissive wave. “Just waiting for orders from higher up. But in the meantime - since we’re guarding you anyway – I want to watch old Pax do the Purnham Run in ten parsecs again. My datapad’s frizzled.”

 

“You’re letting me go,” Poe deadpans.

 

“I follow orders, sir,” Snowman Number Two replies nonchalantly, his attention riveted to the holoprojection. “So… c’we come in for a bit?”

 

With a forbearing sigh, Poe scoots sideways across the sofa, considering if he could have One’s E-11 primed and ready to fire before Two goes for his. He won’t get shot. A Stormtrooper couldn’t hit the side of a dreadnought, even on a good day.

 

But by the time Fatty Paxxo is zipping through the Colonies fast enough to make his three eyes bulge at the end of their stalks, all three men are cheering. C'ai's show never fails to live up to its ballyhoo.

 

The galaxy is full of surprises.

 

They don’t even draw their blasters when the order comes to escort `the guest’ to sector forty eight. Two swivels his boots off the satiny pouf, casually says, “Time to go, sir,” and climbs to his feet. Just as casually, he taps the binders hanging from his belt. “If you cooperate, we won’t need these.”

 

Poe analyses potential avenues of escape; all seem vanishingly unlikely to succeed. In the passageway outside, guards are stationed in pairs outside evenly spaced doorways. There isn’t an inch of this makerforsaken craft that isn’t crawling with Stormtroopers or Death Troopers or black-plated astromechs, probably all itching to take down an escapee. Trailing the pair through ramifying corridors, he tries to imagine a miracle – Connix arriving with a flotilla of Resistance battleships she’s discovered somewhere, or the Cloud-Riders with a task force of Y-wings. They’ll all be hunkered down on Bri’n right now, no doubt berating their newly christened general for his rash decisions. Perhaps Finn will lead the Resistance into whatever victories are left to obtain.

 

It wasn’t my fault, he keeps telling himself, falling into step with the snowmen. No shame in failure. Wherever they’re taking him, there’s nothing about an X-wing’s weapons system the Order doesn’t already know, and as for military tactics – Poe’s attack was _it._ He’s less than expendable now. He’s extraneous.

 

Another bombshell awaits in forty eight, a utility room alongside one of the main hangars.

 

Poe sees the drain in the floor first, and his heart skips a beat.

 

Ten metres across. Smooth, sterile and unfurnished; easy to clean up. Afterwards. Lacquered walls, tiled deck, but somehow still anechoic. Like anyone outside wouldn’t want to know what’s going on inside. An assortment of organic Yuuzhan-Vong-style weapons hangs from the far wall, and a contraption Poe suspects might be an Embrace of Pain: a rack-like restraint teeming with living tendrils. There’s the gurney, covered in cloth and gleaming metal objects that he can’t make out. And _there’s_ exactly where the Supreme Loser had stood, arm outstretched, probing Poe’s brain in silent agony.

 

A torture chamber.

 

He’s ready to turn and bolt – _frack_ the odds - when he spies the platform.

 

One raises a comlink. “Your guest is in position, my lord.”

 

“ _Give him the transceiver.”_

 

Obediently, he hands it over.

 

Ren’s modulated voice blares from its speaker, laced with venom. _“Once again, we have the best pilot in the Resistance on board. Revealing yourselves through your futile attempt on our lives was foolish. But you may be of use yet.”_

 

“The Resistance will not be intimidated by you.” Poe’s gaze slides from one expressionless mask to the other. “And your goons are _not_ doing _that_ to me.”

 

Dressed in an ancient-looking khaki flight suit, the figure shackled to an angled pallet would be unrecognisable if not for the matted auburn hair on his head, which lolls sluggishly from side to side. The one green eye that isn’t blackened shut looks hazy as it swings over the entryway. His lower jaw is set askew and his face - a grotesque mess of ruined skin. Must’ve been one _hell_ of a coup, if Hugs is in this predicament.

 

“ _As you wish, General Dameron.”_

 

There’s something wrong with Hux’s legs; though tethered at the calves and ankles, his knees bow backward in a way that makes Poe’s stomach lurch. And those fingers – every digit but the thumbs sticks out at an unnatural angle. The stench of faeces wafts up to his nostrils.

 

“So, who talks first?” Poe says brazenly, swallowing down the bile rising in his gullet. “You talk first? What do you want?”

 

“ _Tell me, General, do you know the prisoner before you now?”_

 

“Uh-huh.” Who wouldn’t? Lando had blathered on endlessly about the extravagant price on Hugs’s head, as if he could talk Poe into ordering everyone out of hiding and recommissioning them as bounty hunters. Some lucky soul out there must be stinking rich right now.

 

“ _The former General Hux is all that remains of the First Order you knew. He is wholly responsible for the destruction of rebel bases on Hissrich, Dathomir and Seregar.”_

 

No sooner has Ren spoken than that single, glazed eye fixes on Poe, and he can’t be sure, but he thinks Hux’s slumped frame stiffens a little.

 

“ _Thousands of the Resistance, who elected to live in peace and presented no threat, were nevertheless annihilated at this man’s orders. Including -”_ the transmission falters, but only for an instant - _“General Leia Organa Solo.”_

 

“So… why’re you telling me now?”

 

“ _Your reputation for maltreating prisoners precedes you.”_ His tone is enough to make Poe's skin crawl, but it doesn’t make any sense. The only person he’d imprisoned was…

 

Rey.

 

Their traitor.

 

 _Stars_ \- he was _right._

 

“ _Do with him as you will,”_ Ren barks, and the line goes dead.

 

Without skipping a beat, One motions for him to enter the chamber. “Take your time, sir,” he apprises. “Two-eight and I will be outside. There’s an airlock across the gangway and a garbage chute opposite. Feel free to use either, and any tools provided.”

 

“Wait, wait...” Poe lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “What, exactly, am I expected to _do_ here?”

 

“As you will,” parrots One.

 

“Holler if he gives you any trouble,” Two adds stolidly. “When you’re done, we will escort you to the hangar.”

 

Strolling inside, Poe examines the prisoner more carefully. After all his bombastic speeches, in the end, this braggart is nothing more than a cowardly, stinking mess in soaked clothing. A disgrace to his name. He’s still semi-lucid; there must be some sort of spice trickling through his system, else the pain would surely have knocked him out. His eye bores into Poe’s with unbridled hatred, and a muffled grunt issues from his broken jaw.

 

Doing this would be playing straight into Kylo Ren’s hands.

 

Maybe Hugs has suffered enough already.

 

...Maybe not.

 

General Dameron, leader of the Resistance, always strives for the greater good. But as his father always said, the many truths we regard as immutable are, in fact, surprisingly context-dependent.

 

Laid out on the gurney is – strangely enough – Poe’s own Glie-44, alongside a vast array of knives, bone-saws, things that might be surgical implements and others he doesn’t recognise at all. What kind of barbarian does Ren think he is? A blaster will do him just fine.

 

Or his fists.

 

“Sir? Anything else you require?”

 

Shaking his head, Poe waves the ‘troopers off with a bravado that keeps him from thinking too hard about what he’s about to do. Within seconds the pneumatic door slides shut, leaving him alone with the prisoner.

 

Mouth-breathing against the stink, he sidles up to the platform until his nose is inches from Hux’s bloodied one.

 

“Well, buddy,” he purrs. “Here we are.”

 

 

~

 

 

How different she’d felt. After.

 

Warm, utterly debauched, and oddly at peace. When she caught sight of herself in his cracked ‘fresher mirror, her cheeks were flushed and glowing, lips kiss-swollen, her hair hopelessly tangled where she’d thrashed against the pillow. Every part of her… _different,_ divested of more than just her desert rags and wrappings. It was the slightest of changes; she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Red bite marks were dotted across her breasts, livid bruises marring her hipbones.

 

She doesn’t know if she liked the reflections staring back at her.

 

For the first time since Rey learned of the Force, she is completely perplexed.

 

Granted unrestricted access to the First Order’s mainframe – Supreme Leader’s orders - reading over their activities has left her more bewildered than enlightened. She’d promised to consider Ben’s offer, determined to coax him back to the light side… but she hadn’t known anything about the First Order at all. None of the Resistance does. The more she mulls it over, the more her brain becomes a spinning top, firing more questions than answers.

 

Why, for instance, she’d shot first on Takodana.

 

Or why, with enough firepower to vaporise whoever defied them – the Order would instead dismantle an entire fleet of Sun Crushers and redistribute their energy resonance torpedoes to impoverished settlements in the Expansion Region, to be repurposed as power generators.

 

Or why so many resettled refugees on Nar Kanji volunteered to enlist as Stormtroopers. Why the Order has diverted the Corellian Run to supply food to sectors outside its empire, when under Snoke’s rule, they’d have fallen victim to Starkiller Base.

 

And then, there was _that_ data-holo. She’d seen something similar once in a junked, rusty Venator-class Star Destroyer; a holo-doc about the Galactic Senate building on Coruscant.

 

Schematics for a dome-shaped rotunda. Its interior yawned forth into a chamber the size of a galactic podracing circuit with hundreds of circular platforms lining its walls, and at its centre, a hovering podium flanked by holocams. A historical illustration from the Archives, she’d presumed at first – but the filename gave her pause.

 

_The New Order._

 

Attached was a list of potential delegates from every region and system of the galaxy. A grand design is unfolding, with the Supreme Leader as its architect. For a fleeting second her heart ached for Leia, wished she could stand here beside her and witness her son’s aspirations for the future. But wherever the Force is, some part of Leia is, too. She took comfort in that.

 

The First Order will begin anew. The war is nearing its end. And whatever the Jedi Order is to become, Rey may not be the last.

 

 _This is how liberty is reborn,_ she thinks. _In absolute silence._

 

But, siding with Kylo Ren? It will mean turning her back on her friends forever, abandoning everything she strived to achieve since escaping Niima Outpost with Finn. The magnitude of such a choice is unbearable. She won’t let herself imagine which of Finn or Rose their baby will resemble the most, or when next someone will call her Peanut, or how Kaydel will carry on Leia’s heritage as general. Distractedly, her hand flits to her throat and she remembers what paralysis feels like. Pictures kneeling among the tombstones of Ben’s victims and the malignant darkness bleeding into the ground whenever he manifested through the bond. Pure, unadulterated evil.

 

Her thoughts run in disjointed leaps and bounds. Han would’ve told her what to do. Or Leia.

 

The truth: Rey, avatar of the light, bearer of the Jedi legacy, the most devastatingly powerful warrior to stand against the dark side...

 

… just doesn’t know.

 

 

~

 

 

How pitiable this life has become. A sorcerer of impotent magic praying to deities who do not answer, chanting fruitless invocations, siphoning life energy like a parasite. Dragging Sinya’s servants hither and yon to plead with his kinsfolk, all of whom would rather perish than accompany some ungodly wormhead to their salvation.

 

In ten days, Kopecz has barely slept as many hours. When he shuts his eyes, he sees only _her._ She knew all of his flaws, and still she stayed. She was like a candle flame, bright and warm and joyful, casting her soft golden light over his spirit. Braver than he’d ever imagined a human being could be. He’d refused to let himself fall in love with Kira Hu’lya, a fellow padawan and twelve solar cycles his junior – and then she took his hand, stripped him of every ounce of his vaunted self-control, and he knew it was too late.

 

Oh, but she was beautiful, even in her alienness. He remembers doing the unthinkable; turning their backs on everything they’d ever known. He remembers the clashing storm of elation and terror at leaving behind the hallowed temple as it went up in flames.

 

And he remembers watching her die. All that was good and holy within him died with her.

 

He witnessed her slain by a soulless beast, the fragile promise of their life together snuffed out before it had begun. It twisted him inside knowing he would be forced to call the creature who did this to her, _Master;_ and live out his days as an indentured slave to the senseless, arbitrary whims of a darksider. One who practised savagery under the guise of _education._

 

He would have gladly sacrificed his own life for justice, but in the end, his brother was the instrument of its delivery. Revenge did not bring her back, but Mother of Melan, it felt _good._

 

What he wouldn’t give now for one glimpse of his _freykaa,_ untouched by time, untouched by death. He pledged his life to that singular purpose, and – as unavailing as it has been - nine standard days without reciting the sacred Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut feels like descending headfirst into insanity.

 

He glares into the turquoise image as it springs to life. “ _Ryma gesu’tuno ozanta yissa, numa.”_

 

“And to you, _nerra_. I hope I’m not intruding,” Sinya greets shakily, wringing her hands. The projection of her overstrung figure flickers, full of static. “We were wrong. The enemy is already among us.”

 

He stumbles slightly and rises as if awakening from a daze. Fatigue drags heavily within his tired bones. “That is impossible.”

 

“You must...” She glances skyward then begins again, setting her jaw. “You must return. I felt their presence. What if they’ve been here for… weeks? Months? Laying low, waiting for that opportune moment to strike?”

 

“Again: impossible. One-quarter of the Navy guard your sector, yet still you demand more.”

 

“Do you doubt me? An airborne defence will overlook an established enemy stronghold on-world.” Her gaze darts to the heavens again, as if to confirm Weel’s squadron have not already deserted her. “The attack won’t come until the commander assesses that the threat is mitigated, and relocates his fleet.”

 

“I did not foresee such things.”

 

“Interpreting visions of the future is a dangerous game,” she argues. “We must keep that uppermost in our minds.”

 

Kopecz bristles, recalling those very words coming from pinched, misshapen lips.

 

“Those who don’t, die regretting they hadn’t, remember?”

 

“ _Never_ recite that devilspawn’s diatribe to me,” he snarls, eyes flashing. _“Never.”_

 

Shirking from the holocam, she flattens her palms in surrender. “Ah… _nobra edgra, nerra_.”

 

“Your obduracy is tiresome,” he snaps. How anyone could uphold Snoke’s doctrines after all this time is beyond comprehension.

 

A fraught silence settles between them, and when he finally hazards another glance at the hologram, Sinya’s eyes have grown suspiciously shiny.

 

“How certain are you of your feelings, Kluub?”

 

“I am certain, _Byt.”_

 

There’s a beat before he speaks again. “ _Ootay?_ ”

 

“Somewhere in the Roon System. Possibly Roon itself. The First Order has no military presence planetside; it’s a wasteland. With no exportable resources or any sentient population to speak of, it hardly seemed worth defending. Any immigrants were transported to neighbouring agriworlds, where they’d be useful.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “So I suppose all this is my fault.”

 

“You deployed scouts, I presume?”

 

Sinya shifts from one foot to the other. “A reconnaissance mission, seven standard days ago. Five starhoppers. We lost comms not long after they crossed the Cloak of the Sith.”

 

“Then why have you not launched an attack?”

 

“That’s the folly of asking for help.” Her lekku undulate fitfully about her shoulders. “I am no longer officiating my own army; Weel and the Cardinal have assumed command. Defending the galaxy’s breadbasket is their sole objective – and they will not redeploy an imperial battlefleet to an uninhabited rock based on a whim.”

 

Kopecz steeples his fingers, wincing at the chill of cold metal against his skin. Becoming half-machine is something to which he will never acclimate.

 

“Presently there are ten Star Destroyers in Ukio’s orbit, enough to quash any insurgent attack. There have been dogfights, but only meagre squadrons of marauders - nothing of the magnitude you foresaw. Nothing my army alone couldn’t have eradicated.” She shivers. “But enough to convince the commander that our current defence is overkill. I fear everything you prophesied will still come to pass.”

 

“You are strong in the Force. _Convince_ him otherwise.”

 

Uncertainty tugs at her features. “Mind control is not my forte, and it wouldn’t just be Weel. I’m outranked. If the order came from higher up, however… the Supreme Leader, for instance...”

 

“Ask yourself, Kluub Ren: where do your loyalties lie?”

 

Sinya meets his gaze, her eyes fierce. “With my people, Kopecz. I serve them. Always. We live in peace and prosperity. It is how the whole galaxy should be.”

 

“Then to your people, be true.” He lifts a brow. “How may I be of help?”

 

“Come back to us,” she beseeches. “There is a nefarious presence on Roon, _nerra._ Now is the season of our downfall. I feel it.”

 

“I am three standard days’ journey from the Abrion Sector by command shuttle; less than one, by Star Destroyer.”

 

“Are you aboard the Finalizer?”

 

“I am.”

 

“And was your offering to Kylo Ren’s liking?”

 

The colossal battlecruiser had juddered and canted last night like a leaf caught in a hurricane. The Supreme Leader and his soulmate, united, he suspects. The course of true love never did run smoothly. If only his own fortunes were so made. “Indeed, _numa.”_

 

“So you have… _leverage_... with him.”

 

Off-camera, Kopecz caresses a creased photograph between his thumb and forefinger. “Perhaps.”

 

“Then use it.”

 

His heart clenches when he sees trails of tears shining her cheeks, the naked pleading in her eyes.

 

“Please, Byt. My people are doomed, and no one’s listening.”

 

“You need never beg of me,” he replies gently. With hinged metal fingers, he reaches into the pellucid column of light as though he might physically touch her across thousands of parsecs. “ _Ma freetaa alema,_ I am always listening.”

 

“Will you come?” she croaks, roughly swiping the tears from her face.

 

“For you – always.”

 

The best lies hold a kernel of truth. Just this one last time, he will repay her kindness.

 

The Force exacts a heavy toll on those who attempt to tamper with it, and submitting to the dark side has aged this frail, mutilated body beyond its years. If the Sith’ari will not heed the prayers of a disgraced Jedi padawan, he shall die a noble death in battle or else fall upon his own saber. In the Netherworld of the Force, his _ch’sei hirani_ awaits. There, he shall kneel at her feet and beg forgiveness – for Ben Solo, for Snoke, for all of it.

 

But first, one final quest. For Sinya.

 

 

~

 

 

The minute they pass through the wide black fissure and enter Hangar Six, Chewbacca stops dead in his tracks. A dozen ‘troopers stand guard, alertness in every single line and angle of their bodies, but not one draws their blaster.

 

The Millennium Falcon looms overhead, once a piece of garbage dumped at Niima Outpost and now transformed into something truly breathtaking. Rey can’t count how many times she’d sat in the cockpit, tightened her restraint harness, and crossed her fingers the freighter would lurch out of hyperspeed one more time without fragmenting into space junk. Too many complex repair jobs relied on engine tape and faith in the Force, especially in emergencies. And as fugitives from the First Order – when something broke, it was _always_ an emergency.

 

The Wookiee wails his amazement.

 

“I know,” Rey breathes.

 

Its basic shape is two convex, gleaming saucers welded together, a pair of front-facing mandibles and an outrigger-style side-mounted cockpit with transparisteel viewports. Far from the dented, tarnished panels she was used to, its exterior is mirror-smooth and polished to a high shine. Any crushed mynock residue – whose tarry sludge had been there so long, it’d melded into the vertexes – is gone. With the loading ramp lowered, she can already see it has been relined with adhesive rubber.

 

On its underbelly, right by the ramp, the First Order insignia is emblazoned in red.

 

They’d sat side by side in the Millennium Falcon during the agonisingly slow journey from D’Qar to Ahch-To, uncertain whether the last Jedi Master in the galaxy still existed. Over the vast sodium plains of Crait, to rescue the last handful of Resistance survivors. And now, here they are again, a full solar cycle later. After so many losses.

 

“Chewie...” she begins, then stops, needing a moment to temper her emotions. “It’s been restored - for you. You and the others.”

 

It hadn’t helped any with her decision when, upon seeing Rey unaccompanied in his doorway, he’d curtailed whatever vicious attack he was planning and folded her into a shaggy embrace instead. He didn’t question how she’d come to be there. Ben had spoken the truth: the Wookiee was clean, well-nourished and uninjured. But clinging to him, burying her face in his warm fur – it felt like another little death.

 

Alongside the Falcon is a black-plated Nebulon-K, First Order-issue. The Griffin beside it looks comparatively decrepit, barely held together with duratape and mynock guts, the same as all of the Resistance’s ancient frigates.

 

Chewbacca yowls, a small sound from deep in his throat. His eyes – startlingly blue in his ferocious face – regard hers uncertainly.

 

“Yes, all three shuttles,” she replies. “And I’m sure there are, but they can be stripped. Disabled.” Naturally his first thought would be of the First Order Navy, tracking their `gifts’ back to the rebel base and blasting it to cosmic dust. “But they’re your ticket out of here.”

 

Rey knows precisely what Ben has orchestrated, but her chest still tightens when the turbolift hatch slides open far behind them. It’s time. Now is the moment of truth. A ball-droid, loosely resembling BB-8 but black-chromed with a flat-topped cranium, rolls into view and whistles insistently. 9E, its dome reads. Footsteps and hushed whispers approach at their backs, echoing through the cavernous chamber.

 

The Wookiee rumbles enthusiastically as a second BB-series astromech scoots across the deck, its photoreceptor winking.

 

“No, I didn’t,” she answers quickly, averting her gaze.

 

BB-9E responds by activating its holoprojector unit, casting a crystalline blue column of light mid-air.

 

Inclining his head in confusion, Chewbacca lets out a yip.

 

“I didn’t kill him because he’d already planned to release all of you, unharmed,” Rey continues, taken aback by her friend’s matter-of-fact assumption. “And return all of your shuttles… and droids, even your weapons, and… and -” the words come faster and faster as the floodgates open, sensing the clear-burning suspicion at the forefront of his mind - “and grant you free passage wherever you want to go, and leave the Resistance in peace. Forever. No matter what.”

 

In front of them, the hologram crystallises into a lifesized likeness of Kylo Ren bedecked in full military garb. “Hello, Chewbacca.”

 

Not to be outdone, the Wookiee takes a swing at it anyway. His hairy arm passes straight through the beam and his enraged roar echoes from the walls.

 

Kylo’s gaze fixes directly ahead, solemn and formal. A prerecorded transmission. “Before you are three spacecraft. Our technicians declared your frigate unflightworthy and irreparable, so I have provided another: the Nebulon-K. Its instrumentation is virtually identical. You will find your starfighters hangared in the cargo hold.” The tiny muscle below his left eye fasciculates. “The Millennium Falcon has been fully refurbished with a state-of-the-art quadex power core, gemon-eight engines and a number of other upgrades befitting of your immeasurable talent as a pilot, which I anticipate you will enjoy.”

 

So familiar is Rey with the shorthand of his body language, all of his little mannerisms, that she can guess what’s coming. When he speaks again, he seems smaller. Subdued.

 

“I can never make reparations for the sins of the past, nor would I ever expect your forgiveness. But you have your freedom, and may the Force be with you.”

 

Spellbound, she stares into the holoprojection. Ben promised her this would work, and she has to admit, albeit begrudgingly – he was probably right. Behind them, many pairs of heels ring on the decking. Chewbacca’s shrewd gaze darts between the three craft and Kylo’s visage.

 

“One more thing.”

 

At that, the second astromech scoots directly into the Wookiee’s leg. As he yelps in surprise, it extends something from its tool-bay disk: a compact tray containing brightly glistering trinkets.

 

“Take what the droid is offering,” Kylo instructs. “My parting gift to you.”

 

Oblivious to the newcomers, Rey carefully extracts both items and inspects them. Her expression is stricken when she passes them to Chewbacca.

 

Han’s lucky dice.

 

Leia’s promise ring.

 

The Wookiee holds them in the flat of his palm. When he recognises what his one-time surrogate nephew is offering he stiffens, rendered speechless, an odd grimace on his face.

 

“These are all I have left of my mother and my father,” Kylo’s image continues, left eye twitching wildly. “Leia Organa died for my foolish inaction, and Han Solo...” He refocuses somewhere off-camera, blinking fast. “I hope… I hope one day we might... come some way towards reconciliation.”

 

“Whose brilliant idea was this again?” comes a familiar male voice, and they turn to face their comrades-in-arms.

 

Rey counts eight Resistance pilots, corralled into the hangar by Stormtroopers whose blasters – inexplicably - are still holstered at their belts. At the sight of battleships, their excited patter builds, and in her peripheral vision, the hologram vanishes. Poe is bringing up the rear, apparently unescorted. Unlike the others, he looks disheveled, out of breath. A grim realisation dawns on her: Wedge Antilles is absent.

 

As they inch closer, Rey lets their indecipherable jumble of words wash over her. Sound, the clatter of boots, highly embellished tales of their aerobatics, exclamations of confusion and amazement over their unexpected release – it all recedes. The deck swims before her eyes, and she feels every bit the double-crosser Poe labelled her.

 

“Hey, ace! That can’t be what I think it is.”

 

“Ol’ buddy – you’re alive?!”

 

“Whoa – _easy,_ pal!”

 

“Mother of Moons, it’s _that_ piece of junk. You shoulda seen when I -”

 

Before anyone has the opportunity to hug her – which will make everything a million times worse – the Wookiee grips her shoulder. His fingers are surprisingly gentle, despite - or perhaps because of - his great strength. Without a word, he takes one of her hands, places Han’s and Leia’s mementos onto her palm, and slowly closes her fingers around them.

 

Craning her neck up to meet his gaze, she understands: her decision is already made. And Chewie knows it.

 

“Are you sure?” she whispers.

 

He rumbles assent and lets out a long, muted roar. Rey’s grasp of the Shyriiwook lexicon is mediocre at best, but through the Force, Chewbacca's words have always sounded crystal clear. _These belong to Ben Solo. Give them back, with my regards._

 

For all of Ben’s horrible iniquities, Chewie still wants him to have a small sliver of his parents in his life.

 

Steeling herself, she pushes through the rabble towards Poe. Camaraderie and fond farewells will come later. Securing her friends’ futures comes first.

 

“Where’s Wedge?” she demands through gritted teeth.

 

Poe hesitates, searching her face for signs of duplicity. “Well, hello, stranger,” he begins.

 

She squares her shoulders. “Where’s Wedge?”

 

“Captain Antilles went AWOL. Black One’s long-range sensor showed him going in, getting cold feet, and taking off without dropping the payload.”

 

“So – he’s alive,” she clarifies.

 

“Roger that.” He rocks on his heels. “Are you -”

 

“I’ve negotiated the terms of your release.” She gestures toward the frigates. “You’re free to go. Get as far away from here as possible, then contact Lieutenant Connix – she’s relocated the base. I didn’t ask where.”

 

Something shifts almost imperceptibly in the air between them. “ _Our_ release,” he repeats, leaving his question unspoken.

 

“I’m staying behind,” she says slowly, rolling the phrase around in her mouth as if tasting it.

 

“Come again?”

 

“I’m staying here, for now. With the Order. But listen, Poe… Please believe me, if only this once: all hope is not lost.”

 

A snort. “You sound like Leia.”

 

“Leia was right,” she hurls back. “Remember? Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it-”

 

“- you’ll never make it through the night.” Poe finishes, and his expression softens a little. “Will I... will we see you again?”

 

“I hope so.”

 

“Don’t tell me you traded yourself to that barvy bastard for our -”

 

“I didn’t,” she says calmly, holding his eyes.

 

“You gonna… work your Jedi magic on them?”

 

Rey manages a creaky chuckle. “Something like that.”

 

After a lengthy pause, Poe extends a hand. Yes, there it is: long denied, longer unnamed – that sense of being a fraud that has harried him since Rapier Squadron. It’s downright inconceivable that the war in which his parents fought and died could end in defeat – with _him_ at the helm of the losing faction. Time and time again, he has considered the possibility that this day could truly be their last. His tremor doesn’t escape her notice, nor that his knuckles are bloodstained and swollen.

 

“Truce?” he offers with a wan smile.

 

Shaking his hand firmly, she watches his eyes go as round as saucers when he feels the datachip she’s pressing into his clammy palm.

 

“Truce.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quote:**  
>  Matthew Woodring Stover, _Test of Metal_ (2010): “The many truths we regard as immutable are, in fact, surprisingly context-dependent.” 
> 
> **Twi'leki/Ryl Translations:**  
>  _nerra_ = brother  
>  _numa_ = sister  
>  _freykaa_ = beloved  
>  _Ryma gesu’tuno ozanta yissa_ = Mother give you good health (pleasantry)  
>  _nobra edgra_ = sorry  
>  _Ootay?_ = Where?  
>  _Ma freetaa alema_ = My brave (female) warrior  
>  _ch’sei hirani_ = beautiful spirit


End file.
